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He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived and let me watch him do it,” said 19th century American writer Clarence Budington Kelland about his father. Growing up on ideals is common, but living an example isn’t. Brinda Venkataramanan had an example in her father, P Muthuswamy, which she knew was tough to emulate.

Rewind to the 1930s. The sincerity with which Muthuswamy acquired education — riding on his father’s shoulders as the latter swam across two canals to reach the school 4 km away — was exemplary. Cut to May 2000. Muthuswamy passed away after making a success of his company, Swamy Publishers, with an unfulfilled dream: that of building a high school for poor students. Brinda decided to give him a present on June 22, his birthday and a day after Father’s Day. She succeeded.

Five years before his death, Muthuswamy bought a small plot in Porur, 40 km from Chennai, with a view to starting a school for underprivileged children. A diminutive building came up housing classes KG to Std V. Admissions were strictly restricted to those who lived within a 4 km radius of the school, the distance he travelled on his father’s shoulders. With Muthuswamy’s death, Brinda took it upon herself to fulfil her father’s dream of making it a high school. She built another building to accommodate classes VI to XII, and there was no turning back.

“The 100 per cent results in the class X and XII state examinations don’t please me. The real pleasure is in seeing a grocer’s daughter making it to medical school or a florist’s son getting into IIT. My father’s unfulfilled dreams find fruition in each of these children,” Brinda told me. “My school may not be well-known in Tamil Nadu, but then I don’t cater to page three socialites. I serve vendors, maids and menial job-doers, who dream of their children becoming ‘somebody,’” she said. She is currently constructing another building for pre-primary kids. “Don’t you think my father would have been pleased with my gift?”Brinda asks me.

Undoubtedly. Humble roots nourished by lofty values of discipline, quality and relentless pursuit of perfection — these are what Brinda learnt from her father in the school of life. And she gave them back to him by building on his unfulfilled dreams. Don’t we all have something to learn from Brinda Venkataramanan?

N Raghuraman is an editor with DNA