Deepavali
‘the festival of lights’ is always enchanting – an occasion to wear new
clothes, eat sweets, burst crackers, be with friends and relatives – a
festivity which brings enjoyment….
The festivity could
be felt in the air even before a fortnight, when one walks either in T Nagar
area, where every shop be it selling Gold, silver or clothes – are overcrowded
– the entire area would be flowing with people jostling to buy more and more. In our childhood, a small sum of rupees spent
would provide a bagful of crackers which would be our pride possession of
exhibit to friends and neighbours.
The reasoning of
festivals is to make people happy – sharing of happiness by being with the
people, sharing sweets and paying obeisance to elders. SYMA stands for all the social values. For creating a better tomorrow, we are
striving to provide quality education to poor students. Only education can uplift the poor to higher
echelons – we are creating the infrastructure and are striving to help the poor
children, [some of them - first generation students] by providing quality
tuition assistance throughout the year in organized manner. At our fulltime tuition Centre – SYMA Growth,
we are now training 115 students [X – Tamil & English medium; +2 Commerce
& Science Groups English] in our tenth year of operation [2017-18]
We talk to them,
nurture them, guide them, make them understand the good and bad and realize the
need for studying well. We strain ourselves to make them feel happy – with
Deepavali around the corner, if the students are to be asked, what would make
them happy – there would be a list [no our students will not say ‘holidays’ !!]
Today
(Sunday, 15th Oct 2017) as the students entered, they were made to
assemble in the front hall of NKT Boys High School, little would have they
expected what was to follow. In a well organized planned move [TJ Ramani,
Kasthuri, SRP, Sadagopan, Sanjeevi, Mani, Sudarshan, Venkatesh, MK Prema mami,
Meyyur Kannan and many others] SYMA gave them some gifts.
As they assembled
at 10 am, in a small speech Yours Truly welcomed them, greeted them ‘wishes for
Happy and safe Deepavali celebrations’.
Mr Sridharan, REtd Official of State Bank of Travancore and R Kannan,
Trade Union leader of Postal employees and others greeted the students
providing them insightful information on the need to stay focussed and feel
confident of doing well in future. The students were given Deepavali gifts and
glee on their faces will have to be seen to be felt.
SYMA supported in
this endeavour by Sri AMR Kannan (our ex-office bearer, now in USA) Mr VA
Seshadri [our member, now in USA]; Mr TK Mani, Triads [ through our committee
member Mr Srinisavan (Fallam)] – the gift packet consisted of
o
Shirt bit [for boys] /
chudidhar material [for girls]
o
250gm sweets packet
o
1 veshti and one saree
for their parents
The package costs
overall around Rs.85000/- overall and we thank our donors for making this
happen and our volunteers for the good work in procuring and packing.
One
often gets queried on when one should start doing social work, how much one
should have to spend for the society, and how much of time, one should devote
weekly or monthly .. .. .. there are
answers readily available – not only by looking at our founder members and
those who continue to serve SYMA and thereby the society – there are 2 boys
Venkatesh & Naveen ~ both of them are studying 11th and this
year they have been coming daily to our Tuition centre and helping our
coordinator Mrs Thara in her daily chores in administration. Such commitment and zest for social service
is rare ~ SYMA found it necessary to honour them and they were the first
recipients of ‘Deepavali Gifts’ for Growth students.
Come
join us, support us ~ together we will strive to ensure that the society is
much better place to live.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
15th Oct
2017.
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