Retirement gift: Colleagues surprises teacher by recreating Ravi Varma paintings on her retirement day

KOCHI: Lakshmipriya as Sairandhri, Nivedita as Shakuntala and Dr Beena Ann Joseph as Kadambari! Latha teacher was moved to tears on her farewell stage upon receiving a surprise gift from her colleagues. Latha's colleagues surprised her by recreating the paintings of Ravi Varma paintings.

It was the idea of twelve teachers of St Teresa's College, Ernakulam, to give a surprise gift to Dr R Latha Nair who was retiring as the Head of the English Department of the college. These teachers, who were well aware of Latha's love for Ravi Varma paintings, thus decided to appear as the characters drawn by Ravi Varma. Everything was kept secret until the end. They brought film and serial makeup artist Radhu and four assistants for the make-up.

It was BCom student Sreelakshmi who did the choreography for the characters. The makeup work began at 6 am. It took nearly two and a half hours to complete the make-up of each character. Finally, when the farewell program started in the college auditorium, Latha was astonished to find her colleagues recreating some of her favourite paintings. For Latha, there was no greater memory than this as she retires after a long career of 33 years. She found it extremely difficult to hold back her tears.