Pranab walked 2 km barefoot to school: Friend

Kolkata, Sept. 1: Pranab Mukherjee, who headed several key ministries before becoming the President, used to walk two km barefoot while going to a village school in West Bengal’s Birbhum district wearing a “gamcha” ( traditional towel) during the monsoon in the 1940s, his friend Prof Amal Kumar Mukhopadhyay said.

Reminiscing his association with Mukherjee for nearly seven decades since they were admitted to a college in the district in 1952, the eminent academician rued that he could not fulfil his friend’s wish to write a biography of him.

The two friends had sometime back decided that Prof Mukhopadhyay would to write a biography of the former President in English.

“A few days before he fell ill, Pranab telephoned me and said it was getting late and told me that after the corona pandemic is over, he will come to Kolkata and give me three complete days to record his interview for the book, but that was not to be,” Prof Mukhopadhyay said.

The former head of the department of political science at Presidency College said that Mukherjee went to a free village school at Miriti for his primary education and then to Shibchandra Uchcha Vidyalaya ( High School) at Kirnahar.

“At that time, those who pursued high school education in the area were sent to Labhpur town, but since Pranab’s father Kamada Kinkar Mukhopadhyay was an idealist, he wanted him to pursue his schooling at the institution in nearby Kirnahar,” Prof Mukhopadhyay said.

On July 1, 1952, two halfpant clad boys Mukherjee and Prof Mukhopadhyay started attending classes at Suri Vidyasagar College and the seeds of a life- long friendship were planted there.

After graduation, Mukherjee came to Kolkata and enrolled for comparative philology at Calcutta University, but he did not take a liking to the subject and switched to political science, Prof Mukhopadhyay said.

After doing his master degree in Political Science, Mukherjee also did his Masters in History, before getting an LLB degree. — PTI