At a Rotary Club award function held last week, tennis player Anand Amritraj kept the audience in good humour by narrating experiences from his teenage years.He said that he was good at playing chess too. “One day, when we were staying in Nungambakkam, my uncle asked me to play chess with a 16-year-old boy. I agreed,” said Mr. Amritraj.
“I thought I was good at chess but the teenager kept defeating me round after round, and I got frustrated. After this I did not see the boy for many years. Then I came to know it was Vishwanathan Anand,” Mr. Amritraj said.
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Surprise cash
At a recent function organised to create awareness about a smoke-free Bhogi, Niveditha, a student of class IX of a Chennai School in Maduvankarai, received a pleasant surprise. She got a cash award from environment minister Thoppu N.D. Venkatachalam and mayor Saidai Duraisamy, for her speech on pollution.
Her schoolmates, Thenmozhi, Bhavanalakshmi and Rashma, students of class VIII, too, got cash prizes from Saidapet MLA, G. Senthamizhan and the mayor. They had sung a song on the need to safeguard the environment. The cash award was given by the VIPs themselves in an impromptu gesture.
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Of parents, children and expectations
Among the many visitors at Shaastra, the technical fest organised by IIT-Madras, was C.V. Mahesh, a bank employee who had come with his six-year-old son, Varun. The father took his son to every project displayed, urging volunteers to talk to Varun about machines, IIT, engineering.
“I want him to study here. He has to develop that interest now so when he is 12, he can start preparing for the entrance exam,” he said. However, Varun looked bored. “He promised to show me monkeys and deer, but now he is showing me all this,” said the class I student.
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What’s the point?
At the valedictory function of the lunchbox survey held recently in the city, everyone was keen to listen to what the official from the social welfare department had to say. But when he started talking about the origin of man 10,000 years ago and his eating habits, a few jaws dropped in disbelief. He also gave data about how many students benefited by the noon meal scheme, whereas the survey highlighted that a majority of students avoided lunch from the noon meal centre.
(Reporting by Vivek Narayanan, Deepa H. Ramakrishnan, Vasudha Venugopal and R. Srikanth)
