Harekala Hajabba: The orange seller who built a school

**Revised synopsis:** In 'BHARAT BHAGYA VIDHATA', Santosh Nair tells the story of Harekala Hajabba, an orange seller from Mangaluru who turned one painful moment of not understanding English into a lifelong effort to educate children in Newpadpu. What began with 28 children studying in a mosque eventually grew into a government school and a lasting example of quiet service.

He could not tell a stranger the price of an orange. He gave his village its first school.

Most of us know the small sting of not understanding something that everyone around us seems to understand. A form at a government counter. A doctor’s handwriting. A question asked too quickly in a language we only half know. We smile, we nod, and we walk away feeling a little smaller than when we arrived. Usually the feeling fades by evening. For an orange seller in Mangaluru, it never faded. It stayed with him for the rest of his life, and in the end it built a school.

His name is Harekala Hajabba. He grew up in a poor family in Newpadpu, a village about twenty-five kilometres from Mangaluru, and had little or no schooling because, as a boy, he had to work to help his family. He spoke Tulu and Beary, the languages of his home. Every day he carried a basket of oranges into the city, to the bus stand and later near Hampankatta market, and on a good day he earned about a hundred and fifty rupees. One day a foreign couple stopped at his basket and asked him, in English, how much the oranges cost. He did not understand the question. He stood there without an answer, and after a while they walked away. He has told this story many times since. He has said he felt ashamed that he could not tell anyone the price of a fruit he sold every day. He has placed that day in different years in different interviews. But what he........

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