Meet Satarupa Majumder, the woman who opened the only English medium school in the Sundarbans

 

It was 2002, she was all of 26, had just gotten married and begun a career as a teacher. But Satarupa Majumder was far from satisfied. There was a niggling question on her mind that she just couldn’t find the answer to: What was the purpose of her life? What was it that she was truly meant to do?  Was it a corporate career that would fulfill her or should she stick to teaching? Why was she doing it and what was it that she truly wanted? She finally found some of her answers when she was introduced to Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism in 2007 by a family member. It made her realize that working for the happiness of others was what she’d been looking for. How to go about that though, still remained a mystery.  

Her quest finally ended in 2012 when she undertook a 100-kilometer trip from Kolkata to Hingalganj, in the Sundarbans, to donate a sewing machine that had been passed down by her grandmother. “I wanted to ensure that the sewing machine was given to someone who truly needed it,” she told Global Indian in an exclusive interview. While there, she discovered that the area had not one decent school, many of the kids whiled away their time or rolled beedis for their parents who worked at beedi factories. And so, it was at Hingalganj that Majumder found her true calling — she went on to set up Swapnopuron, the first and only English medium school in the Sundarbans.  Read More