Ace Telugu film director Sukumar donated Rs 18 lakh to build two new classrooms in the humble government school at Mattaparru village — where he studied decades ago, in Andhra Pradesh’s East Godavari district.

“Director Sukumar and I inaugurated two classrooms in Mattaparru government school,” Razole Janasena MLA Rapaka Varaprasad told IANS.

Varaprasad said Mattaparru village located in Malkipuram mandalam is the native village of the reputed film director.

He said the director studied in the same school where he funded the construction of two classrooms, one of which is a digital classroom.

Appreciating Sukumar’s gesture, the lone Janasena MLA noted that any person who takes good care of his parents will also take care of his village.

He said Sukumar, who directed popular blockbusters such as Arya and Rangasthalam, is a family man.

“He has immense respect for his mother and father. Generally people who rise to heights forget the lows they came from. They settle down in places like Hyderabad and other cities and forget their families,” Varaprasad noted, but pointed out that Sukumar is not like that.

According to the MLA, the director came from a large family of three older sisters and three more brothers from humble beginnings.

“Despite coming from a poor background in a family of seven siblings, he settled all of them,” the legislator noted.

He highlighted that Sukumar takes care of his village and recently spent Rs 45 lakh to build an oxygen plant in the area hospital at Razole, after being moved by the deaths of people during the second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic.

“When people were dying due to oxygen shortage, he resolved that nobody in his home region should die and for achieving that goal he set up the oxygen plant,” said Varaprasad.

Sukumar was a popular mathematics lecturer before taking a full fledged plunge into movies in the early 2,000s or noughties.

He taught mathematics topic ‘differentiation’ to first year intermediate students at a junior college near Adda Vantena in Bhimavaram town in the academic year 2000-01

One of his colleagues from the Bhimavaram college said that Sukumar used to practice mathematics during night time even after getting into movies just to keep in touch with the discipline.

‘Pushpa’, featuring dancing virtuoso Allu Aravind is his much awaited forthcoming movie while ‘1: Nenokkadine’, ‘100% Love’ and ‘Nannaku Prematho’ are some of his other movies.