Kerala   

From `home' to school

A NEW BEGINNING: Children at Sai Gramam, an orphanage run by the Sri Sathya Sai Orphanage Trust.

Akhil and Ananthu are going to school for the very first time. They will attend the pre-primary section of Government LPS Thonnakkal. The duo along with 40 others will go to school from their `home' at `Sai Gramam,' an orphanage run by the Sri Sathya Sai Orphanage Trust. Among these 40 children are 10 who have been rendered homeless by the tsunami in 2004.

Most of the children have been enrolled at the Lower Primary and Higher Secondary Schools at Thonnakkal. Some will attend English medium classes at private schools. The eldest of the lot are children like Subilal who is studying in Plus Two. Soon, another batch of 17 children from the tsunami-hit Azheekkal will join the group at the Sai Gramam.

The sprawling 25-acre campus of the Sai Gramam proved to be the best setting for the children to try and forget the not-so-happy circumstances of their lives. In the company of numerous `grandmas' and grandpas,' members of the Sai Gramam, the children soaked in as much as they could of the folklores and other tales of which aged people are virtual repositories.

This is for the first time that the 40 students are going to school from the Sai Gramam. Before this they were housed in different places in the city. At the end of the last academic year they moved to the Sai Gramam. On June 5, this `family with a difference' will take on the new academic year secure in the knowledge that they have a home to go back to in the evening.

G. Mahadevan

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