The teacher who writes with his feet

The chalk was between his toes.

At the front of a small classroom in Panchdona, Narsingdi, Md Altaf Hossain placed one foot on a wooden chair and lifted the other toward a blackboard. The walls were yellowed with age. 

Unused benches had been stacked against the back wall. Children in white shirts and striped ties sat at worn wooden desks, exercise books open before them.

Altaf began to write.

A few Bengali words appeared on the board. He was teaching the children how to construct sentences. When they had finished copying them, he picked up an eraser with his foot, wiped the board and started again.

The children barely seemed to notice how he was doing it. For them, this is simply how their teacher teaches.

Altaf, 62, was born without arms.

For nearly 20 years, the feet that once carried him from one unsuccessful job interview to another have also been the tools of his profession. With them, he writes on blackboards, turns pages, checks exercise books and manages the small school he founded in 2007.

In one classroom, he sits opposite a cluster of children, an open textbook held between his feet. The pupils lean across the desk as he reads. In another, he raises a bare foot to the board, chalk pinched carefully between his toes.

Outside, he stands among rows of children during morning exercises. They salute. They raise their hands above their heads. They stretch their arms across one another's shoulders.

Altaf stands in the middle of them, in a green panjabi and white prayer cap, watching. His school is called Pratibha Dukhu Mia Kindergarten School.

Dukhu Mia is Altaf's nickname, given to him shortly after he was born in 1964.

Four of his mother Golmeher's children had died before him. His father, Tamizuddin, was a weaver. When Golmeher saw that her newborn son had no arms, Altaf told Daily Waadaa, she fainted.

He learned the details years later.

“After regaining consciousness, my mother kept saying, ‘How will I hold him in my arms? How will he eat? How will I raise him?’” Altaf recalled.

His grandfather looked at the child and gave him a name reflecting what he imagined his life would be.

“He said, ‘He has been born into a life of sorrow. Call him Dukhu Mia,’” Altaf said.

Another relative gave him his formal name, Md Altaf Hossain. That is the name on his certificates. Dukhu Mia stayed with him.

Learning to write

The first problem was education.

His family considered sending him to a madrasa. His father took him to a maktab, but Altaf said he was not admitted because he would have needed to hold the Arabic books with his feet.

Eventually, he entered Dighirpar Government Primary School. At home, his father began figuring out how his son might write.

There were no specialised devices. Tamizuddin used a bamboo stick and soot from a cooking pot.

“My father taught me to write using a bamboo stick and ink from a cooking pot,” Altaf said. “I began writing with my right foot.”

The movement eventually became natural enough to carry him through school.

He attended Batpara NC Gupta High School and passed his SSC examination in humanities in 1981. He completed his HSC at Narsingdi Government College in 1984 and earned his degree there in 1986.

In examination halls, other students bent over their papers with pens in their hands. Altaf placed his pen between his toes.

There was no extra time.

“I neither asked for nor received any extra facilities,” he told Waadaa. “Others wrote with their hands; I wrote with my foot. But we were evaluated in the same way.”

Education solved one problem. It did not solve the next one.

The interview board

After graduating, Altaf began applying for jobs.

He tried government offices and private organisations. Sometimes he passed the written examination. Then came the interview.

Again and again, he said, that was where his applications ended. “Even when I passed the written test, they would reject me at the viva,” he said.

Eventually, he became too old to apply for government service. He began tutoring instead.

That meant travelling long distances, often by bus. Sometimes passengers offered him a seat. Sometimes they did not, and he travelled standing.

The work gave him an income and kept him connected to the education for which he had fought. But as he grew older, travelling became harder.

By around 2006, Altaf had begun thinking about bringing the students to him. He would open a school.

But there was no donor and no institutional backing. So, Altaf started with 60,000 taka. About 40,000 taka came from selling roughly 15 decimals of his father's land. Another 20,000 taka came from his tutoring savings.

He rented 2.5 decimals of land and, in 2007, opened Pratibha Dukhu Mia Kindergarten School. There were 33 students.

“I founded the school using the name Dukhu Mia,” Altaf said. “I felt that I had talent, so I named it Pratibha Dukhu Mia Kindergarten School.”

Nearly two decades later, the school has 145 pupils, from playgroups through Grade Five, and 10 teachers.

It remains a modest place.

The semi-pucca building has a corrugated tin roof, nine rooms and a small field. Seven rooms are classrooms. Altaf uses another for administrative work. The last is for teachers.

The classrooms bear the marks of a school operating on a limited budget…old desks, corrugated metal, scuffed walls and furniture stacked wherever there is space. But they are busy.

Inside, children fill the benches around Altaf. Some watch his feet as he demonstrates a lesson. Others keep their eyes on their notebooks.

Altaf holds an open book with his foot as a group of boys listens from across a desk. His toes grip the pages near the spine.

The scene is striking mainly because of how ordinary everyone in it appears to find it.

A school that has to survive

The school receives government textbooks but no government financial assistance, Altaf told Waadaa.

Students with disabilities attend without paying fees. Money remains a persistent problem.

“We struggle to keep the school running,” he said. “I cannot hire highly qualified teachers because I would have to pay them much higher salaries.”

He remembers an upazila education officer visiting occasionally around 2016 and 2017. Since then, he said, government attention has been scarce.

Altaf has spoken to officials, including deputy commissioners and upazila nirbahi officers, when he encountered them at public events. Some promised to visit.

“They never came,” he said.

Enrollment has fluctuated. There have been financial crises. Altaf says he has never seriously considered shutting the school.

“I wanted to make it bigger, and I still do,” he told Waadaa. “Whatever happens, I will keep this institution running.”

That determination is visible in the mundane routines more than in any declaration.

There are accounts to maintain. Teachers to consult and lessons to conduct. Exercise books to check and children to organise before class.

In the courtyard, dozens of pupils stand in rows for morning assembly. Altaf moves among them.

When the children perform exercises, their arms form patterns across the schoolyard — raised above their heads, extended sideways, resting on the shoulders of the child ahead.

Altaf watches from the centre.

When it is time for the school bell, a boy takes over. He holds up a battered circular piece of metal and strikes it with a rod. Altaf stands behind him.

The bell is one of the jobs his students can do for themselves.

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