A day with those lovely tribal students

My mobile made that most irritating sound in the world, the alarm sound. “4 A.M” Was blinking in my mobile along with a dancing bell. A little conference went on in my mind whether to press “Stop” or “Snooze”. I choose the former but unfortunately slept off again. Woke back again by 5’o clock and answered Saravanan’s call. “They’ve come. Get ready soon” told Saravanan. Nandha Kumar and his team had come to our hostel by then. They are our sponsors for our GEO’s (Green Eco Organization) project for the students of the Kadamboor school . it is a tribal village 25 KM from our college. We use to trek on those hills regularly and we have planned to sponsor a few under privileged students of that school for their higher education. Nandha’s team & GEO had already installed 3 solar lamps at Malliamman Durgam(I know it’s tough to pronounce, go letter by letter), it’s a village on top of the hill, they neither have a road route nor electricity.


Nandha is working for a private corporate firm, so is his team along with him. They are sponsoring to our club for our activities, out of their own interest, lead by Nandha. Thanks to our Orkut profile Ad through which we came to know these people.
We had planned to talk to those students on how important their education was to their village and to themselves, and conduct Elocution, painting, essay writing and Rangoali competitions among them. We had bought grocery for that days lunch for 200 children, ‘Wings of fire’ by Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, a stationery set along with a notebook, a school bag(they use to carry books only in a sack) for every one of them.
We reached the school on time and that cook whom we had hired for the lunch made everything available except the wood to burn! Velavan and me went along with few kids from the school, to buy some wood. Velavan praised that cook with all those available bad words to his knowledge, throughout our walk. Finally we managed to get two bundles of wood.

“Anna give that to me I’ll carry” said the 12 year old Ramesh.

“It’s not a problem for us” said Vel and me, raising our shoulders.
I realized that I made a big blunder when we were half way. It was so heavy and I kept on switching the wood on both my shoulders. Finally, Ramesh carried it for me. “We are used to this” Ramesh winked.
None of your push ups and Gym workouts will help you up. To carry wood, you should have been use to carry wood, that’s it.
Competitions had already begun. Jagan was hosting DumbC in a class of 50. Everyone was lighted up to hear about the movie of their favorite heroes, except the girls! We pulled the girls out calling out their names, it was shy overall. Generally all were reluctant to talk, to face the crowd. Most of the girls didn’t know what to answer when asked about her ambition and just replicated what her neighbor told! We really need a modern Periyar as one of our policymakers. The resource gap between the urban and rural India is dangerously drastic. It is high time we start fixing it. But few were really shrewd, shouting out the answers to the G.K. questions.
“Who is the president of India?”
“Prathiba Patil”, a clear shout.
“Who is the leader of DMDK?”
“Vijayakant” chorused the whole class. Some delicate darlings in my college wouldn’t know that, I bet. I’m not kidding, I’m serious.


Ambi was busy with his like minded people. He kick started a gully cricket among them and things were going in good pace. I grabbed the cam from him. Clicked a few rangolis, some colorful paintings depicting their village, and quite a few think tanks busy with their essays.


Conducting Elocution among them was an amazing experience for me. Only five had given their names but we almost made ten students to talk on the stage. (‘Participation is more important than winning’ – Le Coubertine, from my 10Th Standard English text book!)”Importance of protecting our environment” was one of the given topics. The students touched the every aspect of it right from recyclable plastics to ozone layer depletion. Few were ready to take on the stage though they were not prepared. When things were done, some of us requested them to sing. Again, shy overall!. Some bold enough singers came up to the stage finally. Maheswari was one among them, sang a song about, she writing a letter to her mom, depicting her hostel life, asking about their usual troubles back at home. It really moved us. We again went back to her for the lyrics and came to know that one of her seniors at the same school was the lyricist. Velavan got onto the stage and talked about the purpose us coming there. The talk went on for while and the students were listening to him with at most sincerity. I could see the sense of satisfaction on the faces of Nandha’s team. Velavan just emotes you.


Children sat for their lunch. You should have seen their smiles and hisses when papad was brought into the hall. It was a complete joy to serve sambar rice to those kids, which is a rarity for them. Nature has really blessed us in what we are now.
We were packing up after the prize distribution. We were asking those kids about what do they think about us and we spending timing with them. Few wanted us to come back, few were sad that we were leaving, few didn’t answer at all.
One of the girls among them said “Even we would like to study hard and go to such schools when we are grown up”. Victory for us, temporary one though. A long way to go:)