THE CHILDREN OF KALLUPATTI
It was September 1988. Ajit Mani and I were on our way from Bangalore to Madurai to G. Kallupatti, where Reaching the Unreached (RTU) was based. “This place is full of children”, Ajit had mentioned. An organisation supported by Actionaid, I was being considered for being deputed to RTU to assist Bro. Kimpton. Ajit was then the Field Director for South India with Actionaid. “And if you like children, you will fall in love with RTU, and ofcourse, you will be in the good books of Brother James Kimpton”, he said.
Bro. JK was a British missionary of the De La Salle order, who had been working in Madurai since the sixties, setting up homes for children, schools for poor children and vocational training centres, having worked for a couple of decades before in Sri Lanka (or Ceylon, then). It was pretty quiet when we reached Kallupatti, late in the evening, not a bit like what Ajit was preparing me for. “Don’t get deceived” cautioned Ajit. “They will all be here peering through the windows in the morning”. He was referring to the children, most of them orphaned and destitute who lived in neatly built small one-bedroom cottages, being cared for by a woman who was a ‘foster’ mother for the children. And true enough, they were all there when I went to the verandah to have my morning tea.
Initially, they were a bit shy – girls and boys of varying ages. But they all had a bright, welcoming smile. And in a matter of minutes, they had managed to perch themselves at the edge of the verandah, probably realising that we were harmless. “Mama, unga paer enna” (uncle, what is your name ?), they asked in Tamil, trying to become more familiar. That innocuous question and the answer to it literally lifted the sluice valve for questions to flow in. They were no more in ones and twos. The questions were in chorus. And in Tamil, a language I barely understood then. Obviously, the answer to most of the questions was a smile, a smile and more smiles !
That was the beginning of my orientation to the famed children of RTU. There was the day care centre, the balwadis (pre-primary centres), the full time primary schools, the supplementary schools (for those studying in the poorly managed local government schools), the vocational training centres, the foster homes. In all, about 2000 children with whom RTU directly worked with, not to mention the thousands of children the RTU team regularly in contact with through their other programmes !
It was mandatory for Bro. JK to take an afternoon walk through the village. Pied Piper like, he would be followed by umpteen children greeted with lusty shouts of “Thatha, vanakkam” (greetings, grandfather) all along. He was a familiar sight, yet the children would reach out to him, to hold his hand, pull him to their houses for a cup of tea. Often, in the evenings, Bro JK would sit outside his little office room to greet the children as they went back home from school and he would indulge them with boiled candies.
When I eventually joined RTU, I had an office room right next to Bro. JK’s. It was always a delight to see the children walk by, run by, shout along as they made their way to their school or home, often peeping through my window to check out what I was doing, sometimes, coming in up to my table for a quick chat. Holidays in schools and vacations were truly boring times on the campus (remember that popular Tamil film song ‘April – May-elay, pasumay yen illae, kaanj poch da’…….why is there no greenery in April and May, everything looks so dry ?). Though that song was sung in a different context by a bunch of boys in college, ruing about the absence of girls on college campuses in the summer vacation, I found myself humming that song in April and May, when children were a rare sight on the RTU campus.
It was September 1988. Ajit Mani and I were on our way from Bangalore to Madurai to G. Kallupatti, where Reaching the Unreached (RTU) was based. “This place is full of children”, Ajit had mentioned. An organisation supported by Actionaid, I was being considered for being deputed to RTU to assist Bro. Kimpton. Ajit was then the Field Director for South India with Actionaid. “And if you like children, you will fall in love with RTU, and ofcourse, you will be in the good books of Brother James Kimpton”, he said.
Bro. JK was a British missionary of the De La Salle order, who had been working in Madurai since the sixties, setting up homes for children, schools for poor children and vocational training centres, having worked for a couple of decades before in Sri Lanka (or Ceylon, then). It was pretty quiet when we reached Kallupatti, late in the evening, not a bit like what Ajit was preparing me for. “Don’t get deceived” cautioned Ajit. “They will all be here peering through the windows in the morning”. He was referring to the children, most of them orphaned and destitute who lived in neatly built small one-bedroom cottages, being cared for by a woman who was a ‘foster’ mother for the children. And true enough, they were all there when I went to the verandah to have my morning tea.
Initially, they were a bit shy – girls and boys of varying ages. But they all had a bright, welcoming smile. And in a matter of minutes, they had managed to perch themselves at the edge of the verandah, probably realising that we were harmless. “Mama, unga paer enna” (uncle, what is your name ?), they asked in Tamil, trying to become more familiar. That innocuous question and the answer to it literally lifted the sluice valve for questions to flow in. They were no more in ones and twos. The questions were in chorus. And in Tamil, a language I barely understood then. Obviously, the answer to most of the questions was a smile, a smile and more smiles !
That was the beginning of my orientation to the famed children of RTU. There was the day care centre, the balwadis (pre-primary centres), the full time primary schools, the supplementary schools (for those studying in the poorly managed local government schools), the vocational training centres, the foster homes. In all, about 2000 children with whom RTU directly worked with, not to mention the thousands of children the RTU team regularly in contact with through their other programmes !
It was mandatory for Bro. JK to take an afternoon walk through the village. Pied Piper like, he would be followed by umpteen children greeted with lusty shouts of “Thatha, vanakkam” (greetings, grandfather) all along. He was a familiar sight, yet the children would reach out to him, to hold his hand, pull him to their houses for a cup of tea. Often, in the evenings, Bro JK would sit outside his little office room to greet the children as they went back home from school and he would indulge them with boiled candies.
When I eventually joined RTU, I had an office room right next to Bro. JK’s. It was always a delight to see the children walk by, run by, shout along as they made their way to their school or home, often peeping through my window to check out what I was doing, sometimes, coming in up to my table for a quick chat. Holidays in schools and vacations were truly boring times on the campus (remember that popular Tamil film song ‘April – May-elay, pasumay yen illae, kaanj poch da’…….why is there no greenery in April and May, everything looks so dry ?). Though that song was sung in a different context by a bunch of boys in college, ruing about the absence of girls on college campuses in the summer vacation, I found myself humming that song in April and May, when children were a rare sight on the RTU campus.
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