They laugh; they run; they sketch a tree on a blackboard. Some get their faces painted, while some others paint the clay figures they just made. The children of the village of Senji Amman Nagar near Pulicat are having a whale of a time on a Sunday morning. Scuttling between them are Kumar and friends of Aram. The Chennai-based youngsters have adopted the village to provide the little ones there a happy childhood and an even happier adulthood.
“Adopted is not the right word. This village is our own,” says 26-year-old engineer Kumar. With his face painted to amuse the kids, Kumar calls himself “ kadhai solli, oor suttri — a storyteller and wanderer.” The idea to start Aram occurred to him three years ago when he was picnicking with friends in Pulicat. With just 100 houses, Senji Amman Nagar was one of those places that you pass by but never actually stop at.
One day, Kumar and friends walked into the village and announced to the elders that they would like to take tuitions for the kids. “They were surprised that we were even interested in their village,” says Kumar. “We first held a thiruvizha (festival) with games and competitive events to enthuse them; even the village elders joined in.”
Now that they had the people’s attention, the team got down to work. “Subash, a friend, installed a tubelight and planted a blackboard in the middle of a mud road, gathered some kids, and started taking tuitions in the evenings,” explains Kumar. An engineer himself, Subash taught at a college in Ponneri. “He would ride to the village every evening after work and spend an hour with the children,” he adds.
Subash’s classes worked like a dream. “Initially, we had just two students; now we have over 40,” says Kumar. Soon, villager Shanthi offered them her house — the hut, with a thatch-roofed verandah, is the centre of action of all of Aram’s events. They also plan to start a library in the premises. Kumar and the other members come there on Sundays to involve the kids in various activities. They tell stories, draw and paint together, enact plays, play games, perform mimes, do craftwork and puppetry, plant trees…all in an effort to help the kids develop a better understanding of the world and enthusiasm to do well in life.
For the youngsters, Senji Amman Nagar is a pit stop that’s part of a longer journey. Once their purpose has been achieved, Kumar says they will move on elsewhere to nurture a new bunch of kids. “There are no graduates in this village. We hope to change that before we leave,” he adds.
The Aram team doesn’t believe in collecting funds or printing pamphlets. “When we plan an event, things somehow tend to fall in place,” says Kumar. “We’ve never had money crunch...I have a generous circle of friends such as Praveen, Ashwin, Sathish, Srilekha, Sheeba and Mahesh, who support us when in need,” he adds.
Kumar has been working with children in orphanages ever since he completed his engineering degree. “I was raised in one myself,” he says. Abandoned by his father at a young age, Kumar says he knows the pain of a lonely childhood. “A lonely child will never talk, but once you open him/her up with a game, story or a group activity, you will be amazed at what they can do,” he says.
Kumar has a constant itch to tell stories to children and listen to theirs. As a result, he is constantly on the move, doing just that. When he is not involved in Aram’s activities, he travels from one city to another to tell stories in schools. He calls this programme ‘Kadhai solrom vaanga’ — ‘Come, we’ll tell you stories’.
“Storytelling can achieve what the education system drives at — it can make children read, write, and think,” says Kumar. He and his team have been to Coimbatore, Pollachi, and Kovalam to hold storytelling events, that according to Kumar, teach them much more than what they intend to teach the kids.
“They know everything. They have a knack of expressing even the most profound matters in astonishing simplicity,” says Kumar. And children are brutally honest. “At one of our events, a little boy walked out as I was narrating a story saying, ‘ Kadhai mokkaya irukka na — what a boring story’. If only we could be so unpretentious,” he smiles.
