Shubha Vishwanath, teacher, made it a point to personally see off Guides Srinidhi and Shivani Rai at the Mangalore Junction Railway Station on Saturday night.
The children from Chinmaya High School are among the 25 Scouts and Guides, who were all there to take the Kochuveli-Chandigarh train to Delhi and later Dehradun, where they will be participating in the centenary celebrations of Scouts and Guides to be held next week.
Ms. Vshwanath heads the Guides unit of the school. While the rest of the Guides were seen off by their parents, Srinidhi and Shivani were lucky that Ms. Vishwanath herself came to wish them good luck. The atmosphere was electrifying for the Scouts and Guides, who said they were feeling very proud to have been selected for such a mega event.
What is there to celebrate if the movement is 100 years old? A group of girls kept thinking about this question for some time. One of them said, “Is it not big? It has survived a full 100 years.” It would give us an opportunity to meet people from other parts of the country. “I will participate in every competition – from Rangoli drawing to painting,” she said.Drawn from different schools from across the district, it appeared that many of them had already become friends within a few minutes of their meeting one another at the railway station. When they sang the Scouts and Guides prayer, “Daya kar daan bhakthi ka…”, a little before the arrival of their train, one could sense the bonding effect it had on them.Prathim Kumar, a teacher from Sarojini Madhusudhan Kushe High School, who was in-charge of the entire Scouts and Guides contingent, wished he had got more time to arrange the journey.
He just had one week to do that. Tickets for most of the children had to be purchased in Tatkal scheme and might not be reimbursed, he said. Dakshina Kannada unit of Scouts and Guides is considered to be the best in the State. It has won the Abdul Gafoor award in nine of 10 years, according to Rover Gopalakrishna.
A group of seven Rovers left by the same train to help authorities in managing Kumbh Mela. They formed the third batch of Rovers from the State to be doing duty at Kumbh Mela.
