Asit Das at his art class. Picture by Swarup Mondal

Midnapore, Nov. 23: An elderly man, the ever-so-common rickshaw-puller through the week, takes on a radically different mantle over weekends in Midnapore town. He turns art teacher for around 30 children who huddle around his three-wheeler.

Asit Das, 62, is not a rickshawallah for the children. He is their Aankadadu (grandpa who paints), a sketch board balanced on his lap and pencil between his fingers.

Pulling the rickshaw, Asit earns about Rs 100 a week. With this money, he buys drawing paper, pencils, crayons and watercolour for the children.

He also buys candies — the prize for a good sketch.

On Saturday and Sunday afternoon, Asit and his students gather in the courtyard of a club near Laldighi, about 130km from Calcutta.

He left his ancestral house, wife and son seven years ago because he felt he was living a life without purpose. “I had studied up to Class IX at Midnapore Collegiate School. I quit school after my father died and started working as a labourer. I started pulling my rickshaw once I had a family. But I was not satisfied. I wanted to do something more fulfilling,” Asit said.

His son Chandan, too, quit school, but because he fell into bad company. “I tried to bring him to the right path but he would not listen. Now, he is a helper to a truck driver,” said the father.

He could see other children in the neighbourhood going the way his son did. “Many of them were leaving school and doing nothing of worth. I felt I should do something for the children so they learn something good in life. One of my teachers always told us to help build good human beings.”

“I decided to teach the children here how to draw, the only thing I knew,” said Asit.

When Asit told his wife Kalpana and son Chandan that he was leaving home, “they were angry, but still I left, telling my son to take care of his mother”.

Asit lives under a shed built for bus passengers near Laldighi. When it rains, a local resident allows him to sleep in his garage.

Bhakti Sangha allows him to hold the drawing classes on a field in front of the club.

“We were overwhelmed by his sincerity. We feel sorry we cannot provide him a room to open a proper art school. We hope to do that for Aankadadu some day,” said club secretary Ashok Bhattacharya.

The parents see a blessing in Aankadadu. “My daughter has not only learnt to draw well, she has won prizes in local competitions,” said Lakshman Goswami, a goldsmith. His daughter Nisha is a Class V student.

Rupali, 8, and Sonali, 4, whose father is a cook, also attend the classes. “Asitbabu really takes care of his students. They would not have got such training if I had admitted them to a conventional art school. I am grateful to him,” said their father Chandi Das.