“Hi! I am Jagu.” V.G. Jagadeesh introduces himself as I enter his house in Ramnagar. What is so special about Jagu? He is a tetraplegic and cannot use his limbs and torso. But that is not what defines him. He is a 24-year-old, a voracious reader, a blogger, budding novelist, poet and a social activist who reaches out to children.
Ask him about his favourite books, he says. “I love Sujatha among story writers and Vaali for his poetry. Biographies and stories based on real life incidents excite me the most.” Reading helps him dream, and brings his imagination alive. “Books are my best friends.”
Invited to conduct a workshop for orphaned children in Pollachi, Jagu and his friends taught them lessons on road safety and also began a small library by donating six books. Soon books started pouring in from the neighbourhood. Once they collected 100 books, they decided to turn a deserted block near the village temple into a library hall. “A gentleman from Chennai saw my tweet about this library and contributed Rs.5000 to make it bigger. It is magical how good things follow honest initiatives.” He is excited about the inauguration of the library, which will be inaugurated tomorrow.
On his blog, he calls himself Kirukkan (mad man). Some foreigners, who became curious about its meaning, soon began to learn Tamil from him through Skype.
Jagadeesh doesn’t let his disabilities daunt him. His computer is his world because he can move only his fingers. He uses a virtual key board and operates the system with ease. He learned computer coding and designing on the Internet and was offered a job by Mathura Travels. Recently he participated in the Coimbatore Marathon 2015.
“We plan to introduce some Tamil books and stories as flip books and animation videos. It’s in the discussion stage. Over a hundred of us are into this connected through Facebook.” He always says ‘we’ because he is never alone; he has so many friends from all over the world.
He remembers his teachers in Amrit School who first instilled the reading habit in him. “They kept telling us that we are not special children; that we are also a part of the society and we can do wonders,” he says.
His grandmother is the most important person in his life. She wheels him around and shows him the world he wants to see. “Jagu anna is very humorous and naughty. But if you disturb him when he is working, he is pretty dangerous,” laughs Banumathi, a friend. His friends worry about his addiction to coffee. “Coffee is my love, I write poetry with coffee,” he says as he swallows his third cup for the day. He wishes to build a library someday with free access to books. Items on his bucket list include being a scriptwriter in Tamil cinema and “I want to travel on a plane some day.”
