Mangaluru: Aravind Adiga donates Rs 1 Crore to his school

Mangaluru: Aravind Adiga donates Rs 1 Crore to his school

Mangalore Today

Mangaluru: July 1, 2015: The Canara High School Association, on the threshold of its 125th-year celebrations, received a big boost with alumnus and writer Aravind Adiga handing over a cheque of Rs 1 crore to the school on Tuesday.

 

The Man Booker winner did his primary and higher secondary education from the Canara institution. The association will utilize the money to set up endowments named after five teachers who founded the institution in 1891. Association secretary M Ranganath Bhat said Adiga volunteered to make a donation to the institution at its historic turn. "Adiga heard our plan for the next 25 years and offered to donate Rs 50 lakh. Later, he revised it to Rs 70 lakh," he said.

When Adiga handed over the cheque to the institution, it came as a Rs 1-crore sweet surprise. The endowment will be used to provide free education to economically backward students who study in the institution’s primary schools. The endowment will carry the names of the school’s founding teachers - U Srinivas Rao, B Padmanabha Baliga, B Vaman Baliga, Arkul Vasudev Rao and A Padmanabayya.

Harish Bhat, a member of Tata Sons’ group executive council, said Adiga has immortalized the qualities of a teacher in his book, Last Man in Tower.

"In the novel, a teacher successfully takes on a greedy realtor who wants to grab slum land," Bhat pointed out.