Pranab Kumar Sengupta and wife Amita at their Patipukur residence on Monday evening. The smiles on their faces lit up the simple two-room house of the man Basak Bagan knows and loves as “Mastermoshai”. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Pranab Kumar Sengupta, the schoolteacher who worked 35 years for Rs 21.75 a month, can finally afford to spend Rs 45 a day on a tablet to ease the pain in his knees.

Sengupta, 58, received a cheque for Rs 13.9 lakh from the government two weeks ago — his arrears from the day he had started working as a temporary assistant teacher at Patipukur Basak Bagan Primary School in 1973 till December 2007 — and immediately booked two train tickets to Vellore.

“My wife and I needed medical attention more than anything else. We had been prescribed a tablet four years ago that cost more than double my salary. We suffered in silence,” the schoolteacher told Metro after returning to the city from Vellore, in Tamil Nadu, on Monday.

Sengupta and his wife Amita’s chronic knee pain is the legacy of three decades of hardship and a 15-year legal battle for justice.

The Telegraph has run a campaign for the schoolteacher from July 2002.

The high court had ruled in the schoolteacher’s favour in June 2007, but it was not till last Monday that Sengupta was convinced that his ordeal had at last ended.

“I went to my bank to check whether the cheque had been cleared. I had become cynical, and with some reason,” he said, a wry smile playing on his lips.

But now that the money is in the bank, how does he intend spending it?

“Na pete pete pawar icchhe ta chole gechhe. Amader dujoner ichhe chhilo berabar. Ekhon hantoor byathate morchhi dujone, jai ki kore? (After not getting anything for so long, the desire to get something has gone. The two of us have always wanted to travel. But how can we go now with such acute pain in our knees?),” Sengupta said.

His first pay hike in 35 years came in July 2008, when the primary education department fixed his gross monthly salary at around Rs 13,500 with effect from January that year. He was also offered an “ad hoc payment” of Rs 3 lakh, to be adjusted later with his arrears from 1973, but he chose to wait for the full payment.

Sengupta had joined Patipukur Basak Bagan Primary School as a temporary assistant teacher and remained an “unconfirmed” employee even after it became a government-aided institute in 1978. Tired of the red tape that delayed his confirmation, he moved the high court in 1993.

The schoolteacher, who is only a couple of years from retirement, is “indebted” to his lawyer Saibalendu Bhowmik. “I haven’t paid him anything all these years but I will do so now. Bhowmik is like god to me,” he said.

Bhowmik said Sengupta getting his dues from the government was far more than a professional achievement for him. “When my mother was in her deathbed, she urged me to pay special attention to Mastermoshai’s case. I am happy to have fulfilled her desire.”

Sengupta could get another Rs 1 lakh in arrears as part of his “final settlement,” according to a senior official of the education department. “The cheque he received in end-February was an ad hoc payment. He will get another Rs 1 lakh by way of accumulated bonuses,” the official said.

If there is one thing that makes Sengupta “happy”, it is the thought that he will no longer have to postpone his mother and brother’s medical treatment.

“I have been miserable at not being able to afford proper treatment for my 87-year-old mother, who suffered a cerebral attack two years ago. My brother is a heart patient and needs proper treatment. Hopefully, I will be able to take them to good doctors now,” he said.

What about the Rs 45-a-tablet that he and his wife need for their knees every day? “I bought medicines to last six months when we were in Vellore,” smiled Sengupta.