There were gasps of delight from children when Sudhir Karamana entered the auditorium of Sri Chitra Home, near Pazhavangady, on Sunday morning.
The actor, who is also a teacher, was at the Home as part of the Reading Day and district-level inauguration of the Reading Week celebrations organised by the District Information Office in association with the P.N. Panicker Foundation and Sahithi. He also interacted with the children.
First was a pledge by all who had gathered there to read and gain knowledge, and help in the nation-building process.
Reading out a passage on success and failure from former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s book My Journey to kick off the celebrations, Mr. Karamana explained to the children what Kalam meant.
He told the children that he had come to the Sri Chitra Home as a young boy on many occasions along with his father Karamana Janardanan, and so when the opportunity arose to visit the Home again, that too for an event to promote reading, the decision was easy.
Knowledge was the only way to attain literacy, he said. Citing the examples of Issac Newton and Bill Gates, he urged the children to look beyond the classroom and read, think and observe.
Children should develop the habit of reading newspapers daily, he said, underlining that knowledge gained through reading could not be got through any other means.
Asked about his efforts to promote reading, the actor who is Principal of Venganoor Girls Higher Secondary School, a 97-year-old institution with 2,000 students, said the library facilities at his school would be made open to the children of Sri Chitra Home. He also promised to provide transportation facilities to the children to the school.
He said he found time to read however busy he was. He read the newspaper regularly, and two books before going to bed every day.
In these times when visual media has become increasingly prominent, reading day and reading week were being observed to ensure that the significance of reading did not reduce, the actor said.
About new generation cinema, he said what had changed over the years was technology, not content. Films were very close to life, but were still an artistic endeavour. They should not influence our lives too much, he said. The actor shared with the children that he had finished work on his 95th film, an Adoor Gopalakrishnan-helmed one.
