Meet 75-year-old Joynal Master, one such former teacher. Many of his students have succeeded in all spheres of life, but this ex-headmaster of Khoribari High School in

Thakurgaon's Sadar upazila is struggling to make ends meet in the evening of his life -- as his decades-old legal battle against the school management drags on.

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Years back, he had filed a case against the school management for sacking him "without any valid reasons".

While a high-profile case would hog media limelight on the first day itself, Joynal Master's grinding legal battle has left in its wake a trail of sufferings. The former headmaster has no roof over his head and no proper clothes to wear. And often he is forced to sleep on an empty stomach. Many a time, local people give him food.

"Living like this is nothing better than death," the former school teacher told this UNB correspondent who recently tracked him down near an abandoned office of the Water Development Board beside the Buribadh. He has taken refuge in this deserted office as the district reels under cold.

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Joynal Master, in fact, relocated to Thakurgaon from Mymensingh after bagging a teacher's job at a local primary school some 50 years back. Later he was invited by the Khoribari High School management to join the institute as its head master. He was, however, sacked by the school committee "on some arbitrary grounds".

Years slipped by and judges who would have been in their teenage years at the time he had lodged the case, came and went. But the case drags on.