The Three Musketeers...

"Three Musketeers".... this is how we were called in our college by our friends. WE…? "Chitra,Priya,Poornima"... were those three.
No wonder "Vishnu and Krishnan" (along with whom we formed the "Famous Five") called us the "Three Musketeers"... because we three were together almost every where in our college. Let it be the class,canteen,lab ... one can see all three of us together.
I still remember the last day of our college. We finished our exam and left our college in our college bus in which we get dropped to the nearest bus stand. We bid bye to some of friends who got down there and then we took the bus to Tambaram , and another "bye" at Tambaram to some other friends who got into different buses .
We three of us got into "18 M"(This is the bus with which poorni always believed that she can reach K.K.Nagar from any part of the world… :) she was not used to the city buses as she always used only city trains.) and Poorni got down at Chrompet with tears which was almost trying to peep out of her eyes and a wide bright smile which was trying to speak a lot which she couldn't.
It was about 30 minutes journey from Chrompet to K.K.Nagar and first came "Amudham Bus stop" in which Chitra had to get down , she got down there and I still remember the smile that we shared with each other before she stepped out of the bus. We both knew what we wanted to tell each other but we did not speak a word, there was only a smile that we had with us to share at that point of time. We knew that from the next day onwards the distance between us is going to go wider, wider and wider... and that brought a painful smile in our faces which is still green in my thoughts and that just brings us closer every time I think about it … now I don’t know when I am going to see the other two musketeers back again.
Three years after completing our college, we three are in three different cities, oh not even in same state… we are in three different states…. Chitra – Bombay, Priya – Banglore, Poorni- Chennai. We never thought that we will be separated by miles of distance in between us. Gone are those days in which we shared every minute of our days together. Now the reality is that it has been more than a year that we saw each other.
Now we are just left with the evergreen memories and the everyday "Hi..." that we say in the group mails… and the frequent mails that we share. The Musketeers are grown-ups now…. They have their own lives, targets, ambition, family, career and so on… But still every time when the musketeers call to each other we still share the same old stories, we laugh to our silly jokes and end the call only to realize that it had been long time since we laughed so much... :)

Tent Schools...

I have never heard about "Tent schools" , until i visited one of them day before yesterday.
I accompanied my roomie who was also visiting the tent school for the first time.
The tent schools are schools which are built for children who cannot attend the regular schools. Also for the children of the daily labourers who work for some construction companies. They do not have a permanent accomodation as they keep moving to different places where the consturction activities happen and these children are not able to attend the regular schools. Hence they attend these "Tent Schools" which have been built near to the consturction sites itself, so that it would be possible for these children to attend the schools atleast till the time their parents are associated with that buildres.
Seven of us went to one such Tent School to have a look at the infrastructure and the materials available for the students and to find out if we can help them by some means. The land for this Tent School has bee donated by somebody(some generous hearted person) and the funds are also provided by Government. We found that there is no consistent attendance for the students as they are not motivated to attend the schools or they move to their hometown with their parents frequently . We decided to arrange for some activities to make the students regular to the school and also attract more children towards the school so that they would get a better quality of life.
In the coming weeks we have planned to spend some time with the students to understand them better and also hold some activities to make schools more intersting for them.

For more details and contribution check out- http://www.readindiafoundation.org/
Also for pictures of the smiling beauties in the Tent Schools check out -
: http://need-a-rewind-erase-button.blogspot.com/2008/05/read-india-foundation.html


Hope for the Best.