The management and PTA of Bhatikar Model High School, Margao, felicitated students of the SSCE 2023 batch for their meritorious performance at the SSC Examination held in April 2023. Shri Bhaskar Verlekar, Headmaster, presented the achievements of the School during the preceding academic year. Chief Guest Shri Damodar Mauzo, celebrated Konkani writer and Dnyanapeeth awardee, presented certificates, medals and scholarships to the meritorious students.
Later, delivering the annual Pandurang Raya Bhatikar memorial lecture, Shri Damodar Mauzo spoke on the need to instil the reading habit at an early age, and to evolve a reading culture amongst school students. Sharing anecdotes from his journey as a writer, he emphasized how prolific reading shaped his own evolution as a writer. In his engrossing lecture, Shri Mauzo exhorted students to take their learning beyond the textbooks and the classroom, and explore the vast world of literature. Reading expands the horizons of the mind, makes a person more conscious, thoughtful, sensitive, and empathetic – all qualities essential for a student to emerge as a conscientious citizen, he said.
The function was wonderfully compered by Sir Gautam Gawde.