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Back to the Village
By S. MUTHIAH
Painted by a child from the SOS Village
WHEN SOS Villages' Chatnath Homes in Tambaram celebrated its silver jubilee recently, one of those who came back `home' to the village for the celebration was Siddhartha Kaul. The SOS Villages have been `home' to the architect-turned-social activist Siddhartha almost all his life, for he was brought up in the first SOS Village in India - founded by his father J. N. Kaul, `Papaji' to the SOS children. He gave up the IAS to found the first SOS Children's Village in India in 1964. It was in that village Greenfields in Faridabad, that Siddhartha grew up and decided, despite what he went on to study, that SOS Children's Villages were where he wanted to be.
When the Chatnath Homes was established in T. T. Krishnamachari's house and garden that were bought for the village by the Chatnath Trust, founded by K. Gopalakrishnan of Standard Motors, Siddhartha arrived at a Greenfield site to help develop it and become the first `uncle' of the Tambaram Village, Working with Uma Narayanan, Valli Alagappan, Sushila Rajagopal, Shanthi Ranganathan and Christine D'Souza, Siddhartha helped nurture the village and brought to it its first three orphans. To join them came the village's first `mother', Amuthavalli, today proud of her brood of 27 who keep coming back to visit her and seek her blessings, be it when they begin working or get married.
Siddhartha spent three years getting the Tambaram Village going - and then moved to Ceylon where he established over five years as many SOS villages, Today, he is in charge of the Asia office of SOS-Kinderdorf International, the organisation that Hermann Gmeiner started in 1949 in Austria to help the orphans of World War-II be brought up in homes where each group of 6-9 children would have a fulltime `mother' to bring them up till they moved on in life.
When J. N. Kaul, on an official mission abroad, bumped into Dr.Gmeiner and visited that first village in Imst in Austria, he found a new mission in life that his whole family has now joined him in.
His most recent visit to Madras brought back to Siddhartha memories of his first years of directing a village. He still hasn't forgotten the lesson he learnt of how the director and others managing a village have to learn to first respect the values each `mother' brings to her home. He learnt his lesson when an infant from the village died owing to inexplicable reasons in a hospital in Madras. When the doctors wanted to do a post-mortem the brash young Siddhartha promptly said `Yes', forgetting how Amutha had wanted the child brought home and the clothes he had been given for the baby girl to wear for her `homecoming.'
"I've still not forgotten the shelling I got from Amutha, who wouldn't talk to me for several months. More important, it taught me how close the relationship is between the `mothers' and their wards and that `uncles' like me have to respect those bonds," recalls Siddhartha.
A moving depiction of those bonds was the story a qualified refrigeration technician narrated in the film on the Tambaram Village shown at the celebrations. He and his `brother', after they began working, built a home (with a loan from SOS) and there, their `mother' presides over their lives as she had done in the village. Indeed, the bond remains long after the boys and girls find their spouses.
Today, `Papaji' Kaul relates, SOS children in India are doctors, engineers, teachers and nurses. SOS has a nursing school in Faridabad. And it has started the Hermann Gmeiner School in the Uttaranchal hills for the brightest from all SOS Villages all over India. There are 39 of them in the school together with other children. Papaji is looking forward to the day when one of them passes the IAS exams - "and then gives up the service like me."
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