Reading Session in chennai

First, thanks to you and your friends for sharing this info with us. I reached the place at 10.30. Mathimaran was waiting for me and we got introduced with ourselves. The place was teeming with the visually challenged friends and volunteers. From Mathi, I came to know that there were about 150 students and slightly lesser number of volunteers. I was surprised when I saw a foreigner who had come over there as a volunteer.

One of the coordinators then introduced me to two students, Govind and Shanmugam. They are doing their M.Phil in Tamil Literature at Presidency. I recited them two chapters from ‘Kudumba Vilaku’ and two chapters from another Tamil subject whose name I don’t know how to translate to English J

I was amazed by their listening skills. I asked them how to proceed, whether I should read it twice and so on. Pat came the reply that it’s enough if I read it for them once. They grasped the entire stuff in just one reading. Wow!!!

It was a great experience reciting Tamil literature. I did this last during Tamil classes in my school days J. I felt like Solomon Papaaiya, when I was reading the classic literature J

I also interacted with Govind and Shanmugam, nice guys. They told me about their daily lives and how they study and so on. They stay in a hostel in Saidapet and go to college daily by bus. They were asking about my studies, my work, hobbies etc.

I told them that I also wrote exams for visually challenged people as a scribe. They got my mobile number and told me they will contact whenever necessary since getting scribes were difficult it seems.

We fret over trivial things when something goes wrong but all such things are nothing compared to the problems and challenges these people endure. We should definitely learn from their self-confidence and the way they fight the struggle in their daily lives.

During the course of the reading session, water and tea were being served. After the session got over at 12.30, lunch was provided to all the students. There were many volunteers serving food and organizing the anna dhanam. Since I had got some personal work, I didn’t participate in it and will lend a hand the next time (not to eat but to serve food ;) )

All in all, it was a very nice experience and now I am spreading the news to my friends and will try to bring in more volunteers.

Best Regards,

Hari Prasad K.
www.dreamindia2020.org