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An island of love for children of lesser god
`YAAVA AATA? Mannina aata''. "Mele aata, mannina aata.'' "Pakka aata, mannina aata". These are not the lines of a poem or the lyrics of a film song. These are the notes that children, deeply immersed in sculpting, say in reply to the questions of an expert hand that guides them to sculpt.
The little ones are blissfully unaware that the expert hand is that of one of the City's best-known sculptors, John Devaraj.
The sculptor was at SOS Children's Village at Hulimavu on the outskirts of the City on Sunday. He had been specially invited there. The occasion was the donation of Rs. one million to the village by the giant multinational, Herbalife. What he did was merely to pick up the mud given to him by the children and splashing it here and there. A work of beauty was taking shape.
SOS Village is a unique concept aimed at bringing forsaken orphans from different places and religions and linguistic groups together under one roof and provide them with the most basic human necessity — love. That love, in turn, is given by people who have been forsaken too, or have had the supreme misfortune of losing their beloved ones, such as widows, single mothers, or divorcees.
These providers of love become mothers to the children and are called so by the children. What the village has are divisions called houses of 10 children under the care and tutelage of one mother. The children are like any other, in that they attend schools like other children, and return to the village where they spend the evenings with their "siblings".
This is how the lives of many children have changed over 11 years that the SOS has been in existence.
Once they grow up, they are sent to colleges, and if they study in other places, they return here to spend their holidays. One of the students has earned the honour of bagging a free seat in a dental college, and two others are in Norway and Canada, pursuing their higher studies.
They have grown up here too, in the ambience of peace in intimate touch with nature.
Victor Painadath, Deputy National Director, says Herman Gmeiner started the concept of SOS in Austria in 1954 when the Second World War had thrown up a huge number of widows and orphans.
Their mutual emotional needs were supplemented by one another, and this concept started gaining ground.The latest donation of Herbalife is in addition to its taking up the sponsorship of three houses in the village. A gesture such as this might go some way in clearing the stigma in people's minds about big corporates being heartless.
By K.Satyamurty
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Life
Bangalore
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Coimbatore
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Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
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