Let's Support Our Students at Admission time

         

Anusuya had mailed our Editorial team. 

The Class 10 student of a girls school in Mylapore zone had a clarification to make.

We had posted online ( at www.mylaporetimes.com), a report on the toppers in the Plus Two exams in this school. A report from a trainee.

Anusuya said what was attributed to her was not entirely right.

And she explained when I, as the editor, called her back to understand the situation. She did not entirely disagree with what we had written but she said what she had highlighted was not found in the report.

Her story - that despite financial hurdles, her mother had done all she could to see her focused on the exams so she could score high. Which she did; she was the topper in her school. We agreed to her point, realising there were some sensitive elements to respect, and corrected the online report.

I got chatting further with this girl. She was keen to pursue a course in Commerce or Corporate Secretaryship. She had applied to one of the city’s top women’s college and had not found her name in the first admission list. She was slightly anxious now. 

She had also applied to another private college and it had sought a stiff donation which the family couldn’t afford.

As we chatted I realised that many girls and boys from economically poor and first-generation learners needed counselling and skilling to deal with the real world where merit alone will not get them a seat. 

Misplaced notions and dependence on big loans to fund their studies are fueled by the hope that some magic would happen later. Perhaps they could study at a state-run college where the fees were affordable and expand their study and hands-on skills on the side . . .

It is that time of the year when the Mylapore Times Charitable Trust entertains applications from students like Anusuya. To help them.

The Trust, active for over 20 years now, can support at least 25 students who do well in Std.10 and in Plus Two exams and get admitted to the next level and are keen to make a mark. Every bit of help is deeply felt by the beneficiary.

If the applicant has great intent and capacity, the Trust tries to meet him/her half-way. Education is costly in the marketplace.

But the Trust wants to be that drop in the ocean that can impact. And it manages to do its bit because it gets donations not only from large-hearted Mylaporean but well-wishers from outside the neighbourhood.

And, the Mylapore Times newspaper also makes a handsome donation - from the profits of the previous year. It has done so for over two decades. 

Your kind act is welcome now. Neighbours help neighbours. Please talk to our manager Shanthi at 044-2498 2244. 

Dogs. OK in Apartments? But who will scoop the poop on the street?

Dogs. I used to be afraid of them. Then, I got wary and found my way away from them.

Then I let sleeping dogs lie and licking dogs lick. 

But I still am not a warm dog-friendly person. In the sense, I don’t rub their necks or take them into my lap.

I did not have pets when I was a kid. My pets were newspapers and magazines. They got all my attention.

And then, this happened.

In my freelance days, I often returned home late. Home was then deep inside Pallavaram, then the suburbs on the south side.

Not that I worked late but late evening was the time to catch up with the mainstream journalists.

I’d take the electric train and then walk. 

Now, there was this section of the unpaved main road which ran down and curved into the last lap of my journey home.

One moon-lit evening, a dog began to bark and I slowed down. 

It came up to me slowly and barked.

I paused and walked on the edge of the rough road.

The dog got aggressive and I began to sweat a bit.

There was nobody around. I picked up a stone and flung it.

The dog barked and then slipped into a dark plot.

Then on, whenever I was walking here past the 10 p.m. hour, that very dog would be at its post and bark on seeing me.

Well, with my thick beard and locks of thick hair, that dog had every reason to treat me a suspect!

I recalled this ‘dog’ anecdote when I observed closely, the Rental Classifieds in Mylapore Times. Increasingly, owners of flats opting to rent them out are mentioning the ‘pets/dogs’ rule - the flat cannot accommodate a dog or the block is a pet-friendly one.

I have come across people sharing their tales on both sides of the issue. And I wonder if the city’s civic body is studying lifestyles where many people, not just the rich and landed, are now rearing pets and putting some good money into it.

So does the Chennai Corporation have to discuss regulations on keeping pets in residential quarters or is this an issue for some other state body?

I am aware that the issue of owners clearing dog poop themselves when they are out on a morning walk is severe but neither pet-owners are bothered nor are ward councillors debating this issue in the city council. Anyway, laying drains still tops their agenda.

This morning, I must have counted at least a dozen dogs on walks in the 20 minutes I was taking in some fresh air in this stifling summer. 

Meanwhile, if I am a guest at your place and you have a dog, just warn me and make the right noises. Put me at ease. You cannot but love dogs.

Discovering my own Malgudi. And encouraging teens to write.

        

        I discovered my own Malgudi in recent times. In a biggish village in south Kanara.

On the trips that I make to that spot along the west coast, the local bus station is my hang-out. I need to buy my daily newspapers there, that is if the few that are supplied don’t run out. I can sit here and sip a cup of tea and just look long. Even blankly.

I noticed an old post box tied to the pillar of the bus station office. Thoughts floated in me. Maybe I could walk up to the local post office which was also in that zone, buy some inland letters and write randomly to friends whose addresses I had on record. Or amble to the weekly 'sandhai' ( market) and wander from shop to shop - red chillies, greens, lemons, melons, tamarind and jaggery . .

Just write what I saw in my Malgudi.

I got talking to the drivers of the local auto stand. They had many little stories to share but they would bolt the moment they got a customer. More later, they would say.

I would ask them - but why aren’t there any autos in this place after seven in the evening?

Nobody needs autos and buses then, one said.

Another half-smiled.

We too need a break, he chimed.

Some of them would meet at the watering hole on the edge of the bus station. Order their tetra-packed drinks, lick the freshly-made mango pickle and zoom home after an hour of unwinding.

I have notes for a little book now!

I carry my Pigma Micron pens with me since I have begun to doodle. 

In the mood, I pulled out a pen and tried to draw the bus station scene before me. Rows of buses with fancy, colourful legends stuck to their sides.

I felt good on that afternoon in early May.

At Mylapore Times, we launched the Online Magazine for young people last weekend. We have been doing this for a year or two now. Since our neighbourhood teens are on a big break and some creative souls may want others to read, admire and react to their work, we want students to contribute their poems and short, real short stories, artworks and cartoons, anecdotes and essays, short essays may they be, to this Magazine.

On the weekend, we received two contributions. One from a student of Vidya Mandir: she has already published a book and it is sold online. The other, from a Sivaswami Kalalaya student, who showcased her ‘animated’ art.

Both are posted online - at the Magazine link at www.mylaporetimes.com

You have three weeks to send your creative work to us.

The details of what you can do and how you must send it are all there, online.

I am sure all of you who write well, or paint or doodle, or are poets in the making. Or even jot down scenes of your holiday or of life around you. All this and more can find a place in this Magazine. 

It feels good to be published. To be read by people.

Start young; start now. Our weekly neighbourhood newspaper is offering you the platform.

This summer, our Journalism workshop flopped. But one soul is striving . . .

 

After a great run, a whimper. That is how our newspaper’s summertime Journalism workshop for children ended this season.

But let us look at the sunny side. The one bright spot.

M. O. P. Vaishnav student Smurthy Mahesh, who promised to sign up with our newspaper for her internship this season, kept her word on May 2. Her first call -  report on the condition of a playground near her home in Mandaveli. She was not even aware of it, leave alone know its location. Prodded on, she trudged on, located the space and threw up her hands.

“There are some puddles of water after the rain,” she called back.

“Talk to the youths there,” we advised her.

She stuck on. 

And mailed back a little news story. 

Her next assignment was to write on a newly-opened ‘Wellness Centre’ of the civic body, again close to her residence. She lost her way, despite using Google Maps. We did not let her off the hook. She was game.

She located the place but the doors were shut. “Ask around,” we told her. She did and drew a blank. “Go there tomorrow,” we told her. She went but the doors were shut. She was enterprising. She trudged around the San Thome zone and located a summer camp that was on and wrote on it.

“Now you are on your own,” we told her.

She took up the challenge. And wrote on the birds that have fun inside the Tholkappia Poonga every morning.

“Redo the story, you have got some facts wrong,” we advised her. She revised it and improved.

The last I heard from her was from San Thome again. Trying to pin down a coach at a football camp.

But six others, all from high school fell by the wayside. Days after we started the workshop. One gave up in 24 hours. Two others sought leave for personal functions. One who showed promise also faded. We called it a day, early. There was no time to waste, on both sides.

Cut to 2015. We rounded up that year’s Journalism course with a tough field assignment. 

One group, a trio, set off to the seaside Nochikuppam zone, the one which has been in the news now - because of the Marina Loop Road case. Then, the families vacated from the run-down tenements had been forced to live in tin shacks on the swathe of sandy land and the civic conditions weren’t good at all.

The trio had to talk to the families, the kids there and report the situation. The young ones worked, gamely. 

This week, the parent of one of trio, sent me a social media post of that assignment.

Children are laboured in our schools. A majority hardly have a feel of real-life, not even of their neighbourhoods. Parents to blame too. 

Journalism teaches lots of skills for life.

If we can teach these to a few neighbourhood teens, through our newspaper, we have shared.

- Photo used here, courtesy Rajagopalan V., is of the trio at the 2015 workshop

(( )) WHATSAPP your comments on the theme of this column to Mylapore Times  : 8015005628

Summer Hols: How about community work? Locally.

 

Over two weekends, some cool ones, we chose to do some personal community work.

I was invited and said ‘yes’.

The goal was to give a new look to a sprawling sand and vegetation plot of land my friends owned not far from the city.

Work would be in two sessions - 6 to 8.30 am. And 4.30 to 6 p.m.

I am not a hard-labour person. Nor am I good at using all kinds of tools.

But my group knew how best to use my little talent.

They made me the landscape artiste!

A green hedge was planned and okayed. And knowing well how good ‘paper rose’, the common name for bougainvillea, is for creating what was wanted, we went shopping at a nursery. 

I mixed up the magenta, orange, red, white and the hybrid, carted some 30 saplings at 15 rupees each and got them planted in a slight zig-zag line. On the second weekend of our community work, some paper roses were blooming, proud in the April sunshine.

This summer, when the kids are having their annual holidays, are you choosing to allot a few days to a domestic project?

This could be at home, for your apartments’ campus or as part of a community outreach project.

Greening the interior of your home with plants can be one idea to work on.

Now this is not about picking up some potted plants and plonking them on a window sill or kitchen ledge. It is about sitting down and making plans, debating them and making a list. There’s some joy in doing this over a nice tiffin spread!

You then go shopping to the nursery and execute it over a couple of hours.

Greening and colouring the exterior walls of your apartment campus is another holiday activity. This transforms the drabness of a colony. 

Again, organise a meeting of youth and seniors to make plans; enlist the creative souls in the group; shop for paint and brushes and crop plants in the campus that will grow outside too. And then, one weekend for the hands-on work.

Outreach is also an engaging activity. As is volunteering.

There are many organisations around you who will welcome your ideas and hands. Perhaps, colouring the wall of the civic body-managed local primary school.  Or de-weeding operations at the local park. Or re-setting a private library.

Top of this week, when I was bouncing some field assignment ideas on school children, we found that three out of five in this group had not stepped into Tholkappia Poonga ( Adyar Poonga). I have gently nudged them to spend a weekend there.

One of them then shared this piece of volunteering news - that Sri Ramakrishna Math in Mylapore welcomes hands at its library, health centre and its campus this summer. Go for it!

- Photo courtesy: Smruthy Mahesh

How Best to pay Tributes to people like Randor Guy?

 

'Other famed dramatists who staged plays at Rasika Ranjani Sabha ( in Mylapore) were Dr. V. Ramamurthi and V. Seshadri.

‘Dr. Ramamurthi, with his impressive physique, singing skills and acting talents was a popular resident of Mylapore and son-in-law of V. C. Gopalratnam. He excelled in roles in historical plays and built up great fame in plays like ‘Sivakamiyin Sabatham’ and ‘Parthiban Kanavu’. Ramamurthi also led bhajan groups around the Mada Streets during margazhi.

V. Seshadri, fair and handsome, was a lawyer and son-in-law of one of the greatest lawyers of Madras, K. Raja Iyer. Seshadri donned female roles and for this reason, V. C. Gopalratnam called him an actress!

These are the concluding paras of one of the early parts of a column titled ‘Mylapore Musings’ published in Mylapore Times in the 1995/’97 period. There were some 180-plus parts.

The column was written by Randor Guy. 

Madras’ well-known story teller and historian passed way last Sunday. He slipped away peacefully in the arms of caring nuns off the East Coast Road.

Randor was prodigious in his writings, be it on cinema, the legal world and on crime in the Madras Presidency and later. Mylapore was his favourite chomping ground. So when Mylapore Times came of age, he was keen to write a column for us. And my former colleague at the desk, Raji Muthukrishnan, co-ordinated Randor’s contribution.

He wanted to be published all over. And he valued the income; freelance writers are still paid small. But he respected even junior journalists and he was great company too.

And all that he wrote and collected was valuable.

His daughter Priya, a Mylaporean, told me that the Film Institute in Pune had recently collected all the books, cassettes, CDs, papers, clippings and stuff at his Ayanavaram residence and it had dedicated this collection to Randor in its archives. Even the Carnatic music tapes of vintage artistes got in there. 

This showcase is one way of celebrating a wonderful person. For all men and women of our city who have made signal contributions, what else can we do?  A bit more?

Can we not have an informal group of citizens who host a Tribute meeting, open to all, for all these men and women when they say good-bye? Perhaps have this meeting at a venue that offers itself for this unique purpose?

Can we have a two-member team that can post the life and work of all these people online so the record survives long, long after the cremation and decades roll by; because while we may have on Wiki and elsewhere, the records of the rich and famous and decorated, where would you find a Tribute to Madras’ first set of restaurateurs or city league cricket stars or feted school Heads? 

I would love to get your suggestions here!

Did you say 'Good Morning' to Thatha on his Walk?

 

Father L. Balaswamy rests in the graveyard now. 

This is a quiet place in the campus of the church in Luz. 

When I spoke to him many weeks ago, he was exhausted from the long hours at a hospital’s dialysis unit. A donor kidney didn’t come his way.

I couldn’t suggest a meeting. Not in the physical and mental condition he was in.

This Catholic priest of the Madras-Mylapore diocese had retired after some five decades of service. Retired to the quiet Vianney Home in San Thome.

I should have met him then. The conversations on the phone were not enough.

Personal meets would have also relaxed him.

I am not the kind of person who visits graveyards, places some flowers on graves of people I know and sit and talk to them.

Though I may visit Balaswamy’s grave when I am in Luz the next time. Graveyards are really quiet spaces.

Balaswamy was the parish priest of our church zone where we used to reside, off Mount Road. Those are faint memories. We re-connected after he retired; and spoke long. I was keen to understand local church history and he had loads and loads of stories and less-known facts to share.

Oftentimes, retired people enjoy story-telling - when they have people to listen to them.  Perhaps, they also enjoy the company. And time is spent usefully.

My co-traveller who is no more, D. Hemchandra Rao would light up at the suggestion of a road trip. He would do his home-work for the trip and bounce it on me and off we went. To all corners of India’s coast - as he documented light houses.

It took some time for the vibes to set right.

Understanding seniors is key to a fruitful relationship. 

Rao was old school; he marked time for refreshments, washroom calls and checking into hotels to call it a day.

Once the vibes got strong, Rao was ready for any road trip - to the Natyanjali dance circuits in Tamil Nadu to a cultural festival in coastal Karnataka’s Honnavar.

There are lots of seniors living amidst us. And they need some warmth and conversation. 

Even a ‘Hello, good morning!’ as they take baby steps on a morning walk, can light them up, make them smile.

<< Photo used here is of Fr. Balaswamy.

This Summer, send your Kids to Work at a Mylapore store. Or train with scientists off Adyar estuary.

 

We know this. Our children need all those lessons and lectures in the classroom.

But the hands-on training is priceless.

Summer time holidays can be learning and earning time.

In school, Dad invited me to a fortnight’s work at his company’s godown of medicines. Pasting stickers on bottles. It got me some pocket money. I also learnt how to interact with contract labour. Lessons that held well when I ran my business.

In college, training at a rag of a weekly newspaper, my Ed sent me down to the print shop floor. Two lessons learnt - the mental outlook of press staff and the ideas that the pre-press team had about layouts suggested by the Ed.

And just after college, at The Indian Express, assigned to produce the weekly Cinema page, many lessons learnt on the pre-press floor. You allowed the staff to feast on the film stills and then worked hand-in-hand in designing the page. And here, I learnt the importance of ‘white space’ in design - from those veterans.

There are many ways in which our teens can spend some days this May, on hands-on education. For example, turn to some institutions whom we must request to ‘open’.

Can our Mylapore zone colleges let their laboratories be learning zones for seven our ten days for schoolers?

Check in with The Zoological Survey of India, the Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture, and The Sanskrit College. Would they admit schoolers to short-term training on campus?

Sign up for some real shop-experience. For all those whose interest is management, finance, accountancy and retail.

Send your sons and daughters to say, Vivek or Giri Trading. Send them to the neighbourhood restaurant or pharmacy. Offer your young one’s services to the local bakery like Winners or a supermarket like White Rose.

Imagine the amazing experience the young ones will have across seven days. The education and the challenges. And perhaps they will also be paid some pocket money! And be give a certificate of experience.

Any sensible educator and employer will appreciate this record of a young one.

This takes me to an anecdote my colleague Parameshwaran shared sometime ago. Walking down a Mylapore inner street, he heeded a ‘Saar!” call; he turned and recognised a youth sitting behind the cash register of a pharmacy. 

This boy had attended a course on the basics in computers at a school that Mylapore Times Charitable Trust runs in a local school. He had discontinued studies and his basic skills got him this job.

What do you think of the ideas I have bounced here? Share your thoughts here!

<< Photo: Stella Maris College art/design students at Nageswara Rao Park, curating an event

Local Stories: A Cake for Appa

I started in journalism working in the field.

There were these loosely-strung lessons from my gurus and these were at the desk.

You did not get distracted even if your Ed bent down to one side, picked up a bottle and took a swig at noon.

Off you go now, would be the order.

And off we went - to the Madras Zoo, Mount Road, Egmore. Looking for stories.

My second guru had lovely combos - he wrote on cinema and investigated the dark. 

V. Shekhar took me on his film studio rounds. I just had to hang close to him and he went about chatting between deep smokes. He never took notes. But soaked in everything to pen columns for ‘Star & Style’. 

When I began to write on cinema - just the news - one of my first copies was on actor Silk Smitha. It got published in ‘Sun’ magazine. 

42 years in this profession and I still work in the field. This is where the real stories are.

And like V. Shekhar, I have been blessed with lovely combos - coverage of the neighbourhood, and assignments across the country.

So when I walk around the Mylapore neighbourhood, I talk to people. And they tell me their stories. Even if they do not know who I am. They talk. 

Recently, I dropped in at Winners Bakery in Alwarpet, opposite our office: for a bite.  I spotted three Chennai School boys fiddling their fingers.

They had ordered a cake.

It was Charan’s dad’s birthday. He is a driver.

He told me he saved his pocket money to treat his father. Rs.325 was the bill.

The cake arrived. Decorated with ‘Happy Birthday Bhagyaraj’.

‘Please add Appa there,’ Charan told the baker.

Wish him for me, I told him.

Your name?, he asked me.

Just wish him, I said.