Juhi Chakraborty (HINDUSTAN TIMES; September 5, 2020)

Teachers play a key role in society and actor Kritika Kamra understood it very early as her mother, Kumkum Kamra, is an educationist.

“My mum is a nutritionist by qualification but we lived in a very small place in Ashoknagar district, Madhya Pradesh, and there wasn’t much scope for it. My mum started teaching in the only primary English-medium school there, where my brother and I studied,” shares the actor.

Kritika says it was rather good to have a teacher at home as her mother would always be around to help her and her brother with studies.

“There was a lot of emphasis on education in my house. She would also take private tuitions after school and there was that environment all the time,” she adds.

However, there was something that made her a bit uneasy at school. “I would make sure that I never cross paths with her at school at all because she was my mother and was teaching in the same school,” the actor says.

Her mother is now the principal of the school and the actor says that throughout her growing up years and even till now she has seen how much her mother is respected and remembered fondly by all her students as well as her former students.

“In a small place like ours, shiksha daan is the biggest daan. She works pro bono. She does not take money. The whole structure of the school is such that it is affordable and the idea is to give access to education to people from different strata of the society. Even now her students, some of them are doing very well in life, have high regards for her. She has a special place in their hearts which, while growing up, I have always looked up to,” she adds.