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!