US Tamils aid panchayat schools

Philadelphia is home to Liberty Bell, and the  National Constitution Center.  A Tom Hanks/Denzil Washington movie themed on AIDs was set in Philadelphia.  The city now has a Tamilnadu  connection as well , with the state’s education secretary making a trip to  sign  an MoU with US-based non-profit Tamilnadu Foundation (TNF) at their convention held in the city  during Memorial Day weekend.

TNF’s  Philadelphia, Delaware and South Jersey Chapters  and philonthropic Tamils from elsewhere in the US attended the convention. Organisers have decided to use the proceeds, by way of delegates  fee and donations, for  school education programme in Tamilnadu. TNF runs a pilot project in six panchayat schools of Madhurantakam taluk near Chennai. It entails providing for neat, well-equipped class-rooms and toilets ; focus on holistic development of children by enabling them to learn, apart from text-book lessons, yoga, arts & crafts, music and computer learning – the kind of things that make dropouts want to come back to school.

A 9-min. fund-raiser video – Kaveri’s  Kadai – speaks of two lakh Kaveris who are on the verge of giving up schooling  for various reasons -  such as parents migration to cities for emplyment ; economic compulsion that put children to work; burden of  household work on children, examination failure, lack of motivation from teachers, and access to schools. TNF has agreed to partner with the Tamilnadu government in addressing the  issue of school dropouts.

TNF was founded on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 29) 1974 by four NRI doctors at Baltimore, Maryland, under the presidentship of Dr. P.G.Periasamy. It  has since set up eight Chapters in the US, with a back-up office of 20 staffers in Chennai. It has a conference room, library with educational CDs, two classrooms and computer labs.  TNF has a membership of over 650 NRIs.  Many members commit funds to  projects taken up in  their native villages.

TNF website says Mr N Ponnuswamy of Pasadena CA has taken up building/upkeep of a village school library near Sivakasi (TN) at a cost of $ 7,500 to be spent over the next five years.  ‘Brightened Birthdays’ is a project that enables one to celebrate one’s  birthday with a monthly remittance of $20 (for a year) to help a girl at a  Seerkahzi orphanage. TNF members finance training of  handicapped residents of Madurai Cheshires Home in job skills such as composting, making handicraft products as well as farming ; meeting schooling expenses of children at an orphanage at Aruppukottai . Mr D Arumugam has offered higher education scholarship to two deserving students from his village ( Dalavaipet) in Erode district . TNF has a project to help the upkeep of the aged and the terminally ill in Eruvadi, Tirunelveli.

The legend of ‘Matka Mazar’

I don’t know if it is still ‘live’ on New Delhi’s tourists map or  pilgrims  circuit , but the legend of Matka Mazar, near Delhi’s Purana Quila makes interesting read.  My source is a newspaper clipping dating back to 1982. The scanned page of newspaper photo feature,  credited to Himani Pande,  shows  earthen pots stacked on top of the tomb of Hazrat Sheikh Abu Bakr Tusi,  a saint from Arabia who  spent his last years in Delhi over 700 years ago. Devotees to his  tomb offered  ‘matka’ (earthen pot) in prayers.

Legend has it that the nomadic saint,  camping in Dekhi,  didn’t, for some reason, endear himself to the then Dehi ruler Shah Balban, a tyrannical type with pronounced sadistic tendency.  It is said the  ruler, in a bid  to humiliate the noble soul credited with  divine powers, sent the saint  ‘meal’ of  iron pellets and a cake of elephant dung.  The sage accepted the offer and  put the cake in his  ‘matka’ mixing it with water to  make  sherbat (fruit juice).  The iron pellets  turned into roasted gram.

Pilgrims visiting  the dargah of Hazrat Tusi offered  matka at his mazar . The one  the sage possessed  is believed to be buried in  a nearby well that has remained sealed for centuries.

Case for Mysore Palace Walk

Mysore Palace Board wants to hire a consultant to double tourist inflow to the palace, says this morning’s paper.  The place attracts 2.7 million visitors a year.  According to deputy director of the palace board,  the idea is  ‘to enrich the ambience, without diluting the palace’s heritage’.  I would be surprised,  if  ‘ consultant’ parachuted from elsewhere for a hefty fee  come up with ideas  you and I can’t think of.  Besides,  one wonders whatever happened to our earlier ideas,  such as the much tom-tomed  palace sound-and-light show.

Do we need  a consultant to tell us that tourist traffic to the palace can’t be stepped up, substantially, without giving people fresh reasons to visit Mysore,  in the first place ?  Bulk of  visitors to our town are  passengers in transit to Ooty and Masinagudi resorts  or day-trippers from Bangalore, wanting to take in Mysore before taking a plane home. Mysore Palace, admittedly, is the city’s prime attraction. But the palace can’t be,  and it shouldn’t be, the only reason why tourists visit Mysore.  Doesn’t the city  have much else to offer its  visitor ? Viewed in this perspective, the palace board has set a rather narrow terms of reference to double the tourist flow to the palace.

Point is,  the palace already takes in all those who visit Mysore, whatever be their reason  – business,  yoga,  Infosys  training,  Chamundi pilgrimage.  Not many come to town only for its imposing  palace.  However much the palace is jazzed-up,  it can’t have visitors in much larger number than the palace already attracts. This, however, doesn’t  mean we can’t attract more of high-end visitors,  by making the palace visit an enriching experience. Based  on my experience of Royal Mysore Walks , I would suggest the  palace board allow Vinay to conduct a Palace Walk on the lines of his heritage walk. If  Vinay is given access to the palace archive material,  he could make the talk that goes with his walk that much more interesting.

Among other things the palace board could consider:  1) Putting  Mysore Palace on  facebook.

2) A passenger on board  Golden Chariot was quoted as saying tourists in Vienna  get to dine at the palace.  This prompted me to suggest, ‘the Maharaja (erstwhile, that is)  who lives in the palace could be persuaded to join tourists from the luxury train,  whenever he is in town.  His wife, who is into fashion design and branded soap-making, can only benefit from such interaction with the five-star tourism’.

3) Palace could do with a souvenir shop,  retailing authentic miniatures of selected collectables relating to the Mysore palace.  The shop is best run by the palace board,  with the items on sale carrying its seal of approval.

4) Wheel-chairs,  strollers, or even golf carts would be very much in order, for the convenience of  visitors to the extensive palace grounds.

5) Special concerts of reputed artistes could be organised weekly in the palace, as they do during dasara.