Born in Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh, he belonged to a family of farmers.
His family moved to
Nagpur, where they worked on his grandfather’s farm that was quite prosperous. However,
heavy rains destroyed all the harvest on their farmland and their livelihood in 1998.
His father had to sell all their property to clear off the loans, and were literally on the streets,”
The family moved to Nizamabad, Telangana, where his parents had to work as daily wagers
and would have just enough to feed the family on most days. While festivals were a break for
most people, his family suffered as they wouldn’t get paid on those days.
“On the days where his parents couldn’t earn money, they would somehow try to make little
food for his brother and him, but would fill their stomachs with just water. Since his parents’
income was never enough for the family, he and his brother decided to work in an eatery to earn
a daily income of Rs 5 or Rs 10 at the age of eight. However, they were soon fired from the job
as they bunked work to play during work hours, seeing other kids play of their age. A passer-by
noticed this, which ultimately changed his life.
“Not only did he help them out in the situation, but he also followed them home, spoke to their
parents, and made him join the Samskar Ashram Vidyalayam where he was working as a
teacher,” . In 2009, he completed Class 10
After that to mitigate his financial sufferings he started working as a daily wager. One of his
friends helped him with another job at a naturopathy ashram. There, he worked for about three
years and also passed Class 12 exams, with the help of the books the patients’ families gave
him.
He got admission to the Siddhartha Institute of Engineering and Technology, Hyderabad, in
2012. However, he wasn’t familiar with the course and didn’t have any kind of support. He was
always kicked out of the lab sessions for about two months because he couldn’t afford the
things needed for it such as an apron, drafter, record books, etc.,” he says. Soon, he got a job
as a waiter, where he worked secretly as he had hostel restrictions.
Thanks to the job, he was able to buy all the things needed for the class. Once while serving
food at a function — where a splendid feast was arranged — he realised that most of the food is
discarded after everyone, including the staff, ate. “Knowing what it feels like to stay hungry and
homeless, he didn’t want that to happen, sohe requested them to pack and distribute the food in
nearby areas,” He made and distributed 800-900 food packets.
Thus erupted the idea for his group, Don’t Waste Food, which he started with his friend
Chakradhar Goud in 2012. It was registered officially in 2021 as a non-profit.
Sourcing foods from eateries, PGs, hostels, weddings, and other functions, he distributed
anywhere between 500 and 2000 food packets every day. Initially, he did all this by himself, but
many from IT companies volunteered during the weekends. He said “ I became addicted to
distributing food and get immense satisfaction from feeding others. In fact, I don’t get sleep if I
know of someone who went hungry” Apart from the people on the streets, the group also
helped taking care of patients in government hospitals, those at railway stations, parks, and
other public places. They also fed migrant workers and people residing in slum areas.
“I know what it is like to be a hungry child, and what it is like to be a child labourer. I don’t want
these children to end up like that. So I try to give basic education, along with some toys and
clothes to them,” he says, adding he tries to remove the fear of schools and teachers from these
children. The group never stores food and distributes them on the same day. In fact, the team
members eat the food first to ensure its safety before distributing. Don’t Waste Food group
receives most of its funding from social media posts. He had also put up a campaign on
crowdfunding app Milaap which helped him raise funds to feed people amidst the COVID-19
pandemic. With the help of the donations, he could serve about 20,000 meals to the people
every day. Besides, the group also distributed about 4000 food packets to dogs. Seeing his
service, NK Travels donated about 25 vehicles to distribute these foods throughout Hyderabad
for about two months. In fact, he is also helped people amidst the second COVID-19 wave by
providing them with oxygen cylinders, rations kits, and cooked meals for those in quarantine.
Besides distribution, Malleshwar and his team also helped cremate over 300+ bodies during the
pandemic period.
His efforts were recognised by many personalities, including actor Madhavan, Anand Mahindra,
and Norwegian diplomat Erik Solheim. He was also mentioned on Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s ‘Mann ki Baat.’ He has also won many awards, including the Indian Youth Icon in 2018,
the Rashtriya Gaurav Award, the Son of the Soil Award in 2019, and the COVID Warrior Award
in 2020 from actor Chiranjeevi. Talking about the road ahead, he says they are planning to
launch an app, where struggling people or people new to a city can obtain food for free.
Through the app they will be able to connect to his volunteers who can provide food from
nearby restaurants or somebody who wants to donate food. Having known what it is like to be
hungry and struggle for a square meal, he says, he is on a life mission to ensure that nobody
goes hungry.
He is none other than Malleshwar
Take A bow Man.
Born in a remote village in Nalgonda Dist of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh(Now Telangana State) in a lower
middle class family of 1 brother and 5 sisters besides parents, this man did his schooling in a Govt School
based on Telugu Medium of Instruction.
This lanky tall boy who is an introvert and who can barely speak Telugu fluently,leave alone any other
language, with an intention to ease the family burden and be of some help to the family joined Indian
Air Force is the year 1982 when he was just 17+, merely by responding to an advt in a vernacular
newspaper
When he stepped into the Mechanical Training Insitute(MTI) in Air Force Station, Tambaram(Chennai)
he knew nothing about Air Force or about Mechanical Engg, because he never dreamt anything of that
sort in his life partly because of the surroundings and the environment he grew in. Fifteen months of
initial training in the mechanical engg stream in the non commissioned officer category exposed him to a
different life altogether. His staying in barracks amongst all sorts of people hailing from different parts of
India made him to realize one very very important point in life and that it’s very very important to
communicate to understand and to be understood. This one trait seed which he sowed in his heart and
head began to grow. Discipline and determination, the two Siamese twins were always at his mercy and
command. He began to add communication to it. This is a deadly combo which he realized when he
passed out of the training centre as the best cadet with double promotion. All the trainees who pass out
will be baptized into the Air Force as confirmed employees and this boy was confirmed with double
promotion, a very rare feat in the annals of MTI, Tambaram. Added to this he enrolled in AMIE and
joined a private tuition class for taking up Section A examination of AMIE.
The Convention was that every batch which passed out comes back to MTI for an advanced training for
1 year period on seniority basis which used to take 1 to 1.5 years.
An Invitation For The New Year
New Year
It’s that time of the year again…that time when you pick yourself
up, dust yourself off, and decide how you want your life to be in
the new year. We call this a New Year’s resolution. Now I ask
you, have your resolutions ever really worked?
We keep on rising to the
challenge of resolutions and yet in the past, most of them have
faded by the middle of January! The reason why they don’t work
is in the definition of the word resolution: “a firm decision to do
or not to do something.” Resolutions are all about doing because
they are made by this mind that decides we need to be different
to be okay. So, we make resolutions to change something, like
losing 20 pounds, finding the perfect man, working harder to get
a promotion, making more money, getting out of debt, and the list
goes on and on. If you are completely honest with yourself,
resolutions not only don’t work, but they actually increase the
world of struggle. Just look at our war with weight in this
country. Diet books, healthy eating plans, and detox cleanses
are oftentimes at the top of the New York Times best seller list
and yet it is so easy to see when you are out in public that
human beings are becoming bigger and bigger and bigger.
I have an invitation for you, an invitation to enter this new year in
a new way. Rather than figuring out what you want to stop
doing, get rid of, or how to make your life better, what would it be
like this year if you held the intention to say ‘yes’ to life? Eckhart
Tolle’s famous quote speaks directly to this: “Always say ‘yes’ to
the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane,
than to create inner resistance to what already is? What could be
more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always
now? Surrender to what is. Say ‘yes’ to life — and see how life
suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.” This is
the opposite of how the mind perceives life. It says you have
to try to control yourself and make your life be what you
want it to be. But if you are honest, all of your fixing and
changing is never quite enough. When you instead step out of
the world of struggle and back into the creative flow of life
(which includes a lot of things you don’t like), it is really true
what Eckhart says, “…see how life suddenly starts working for
you rather than against you.”
One of the most important steps in opening back into life is
moving beyond the war we have been conditioned into
and meeting ourselves exactly as we are, warts and all. We all live in a
mind that is trying to make ourselves better or different than
what we are. And when we live this way, we miss life for we are
always trying to be somewhere else. The healing we deeply long
for is to come back to life – to actually be present for our lives,
which includes the easy times as well as the challenging times.
So what would it be like if, rather than deciding that you need to
change something about yourself, you instead hold the intention
to meet all of you with respect and acceptance? You are a unique
creation of life. Life has never expressed itself before as you and
never will again. You, like everyone else, are a mix of dark and
light. And as you discover how to let go of this endless game of
struggle that is always trying to make you into what you think
you should be, you will find that everything you long for and who
you truly are is right here, right now as you open back into Life.
Think about a part of yourself that has been locked out of your
heart for a long time. It might be the shape of your body, your
shyness, your judgment, your busyness. It could be your shame,
loneliness, anger, despair, hopelessness, or not
enoughness. Rather than resisting, numbing, or ignoring it, what
would it be like to honor that part of you just by recognizing it
and saying, “For just this moment, I choose to accept you as a
part of me.” Now, the mind will say, “But if I accept it, it will
never go away!” That is the illusion of the mind. For when a part
of you is accepted, magic happens. You are not trying to fix or
change anything, or resolving it to be different than it is, and you
are not saying that anything is bad or wrong. You are simply
opening your heart to a part of you that needs your love and
attention.
As you begin this new year, ask yourself, “What is it inside of me
that I would like to bring into my heart?” And if you don’t know,
ask Life to show you, “Life, help me to see what it is that needs
my heart this year.” What would happen if this is the way you
begin 2023?
She was born on 5 March 1902 in the then United Provinces’ Khekra
Nagar She was a veteran of the Indian National Army (INA). She was a soldier in the “Rani of
Jhansi Regiment” of the Indian Army. Her father Seth Chhajumal was a distinguished & eminent
businessman. She had been a patriot since her childhood.
Her father got her married to an Investigation officer “Shrikant Jairanjan Das” in British India. Though
being married, she and her husband continued their different ideologies. While she wanted freedom
of her country from Britishers, whereas her husband was working for the British government. So he
was a loyal British servant.
Because of her true nationalist attitude, she ended up joining the Jhansi Regiment under Azad Hind
Fauz after her marriage.
It was the time when her husband Jairanjan Das was ordered to spy on Netaji Subhash Chandra
Bose, also he was ordered to assassinate him.
When her husband had fired on Netaji, fortunately,Netaji escaped death and the bullet hit his driver.
She was also there, when she knew about this all, she stabbed her husband to death. For killing her
husband she was sentenced to life imprisonment
One of the heartwarming parts of her stories, She told:
“After the trial, I was sent to Andaman for lifetime imprisonment, Where all prisoners were stuffed
into tiny cells.
One day, It was midnight two guards came to my cell and they had thrown two blankets on me. I felt
bad about it. But there was some satisfaction of getting blankets in cold. But still, I was worried that I
was tied with a hard iron chain around my neck, hand, and legs.
But the next day, God listened to my prayer, and the blacksmith came in. He started cutting off the
chains of my hand. He had cut some flesh off my hand.
I ignored that, but when he started cutting off the shackles from my legs, he had hit my bones 2-3
times with a heavy hammer.
It was so painful, I sighed and grieved. And said to him. Are you blind that you had hit my legs 2-3
times? It is giving me a lot of pain.
The Jailer who was watching all of this incident came close to me and asked.
If you tell us where is Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, we will let you go. So I replied, he died in a
plane crash and everybody knows this. The jailer replied, that you are lying because he is still alive
Then jailer again asked me that this is the last time I am asking you, Where is he?
I angrily replied he is in my heart, in my mind.
Jailer furiously said. “If Netaji is in her heart, then remove him from there.”
The jailer touched me inappropriately and tore all the
clothes and indicated to the blacksmith about my breast.
The blacksmith immediately took a breast ripper and started pressing my right breast to cut it off.
While they were cutting it off, the pain had crossed all its limits.
The jailer held my neck and said
if I ever argue with anyone. He will take off another balloon from my breast.
After the Independence of India, She got out of prison. The rest of her life she spent while selling
flowers in Hyderabad.
Even her cottage was also demolished by the Indian Government later.
The government claimed that her cottage was built over government land.
On 26 July 1998, she left the world with a message to every Indian that
“Did She Deserve This Much in her Last Days in Independent India?”
She is none other than Neera Arya.
Salutations to this brave trustworthy lady.
B raving thick forests, tough terrains, and wild animal attacks, a Thabalkaran, or
postman, trekked 15 kilometers every day to deliver letters to some of the remotest
villages in the Nilgiri Hills in Tamilnadu for 30 years. On some days, even if he had
only one letter to deliver, he would still make the journey, traversing through steep
hills, risky railways crossings, and pitch-black tunnels.
In 1985, Sivan joined the Indian Postal Service as a stamp collector in Wellington, a
town located near Coonoor, TN, and in 2010, he was made a Gram Dak Sevak (mail
deliverer). He retired from his post on 7 March 2020 and his story was brought to
light by a group of filmmakers through a docu-movie named Thabalkaran.
During the time of his service, Sivan never took a day off, because he knew how
important each letter, money order, and pension was for the villagers. During one
such trek, he encountered a herd of elephants, and the mother elephant charged at
him. A truck driver nearby honked at the animal and saved Sivan’s life. Now, the
animals, including wild gaurs, are familiar with Sivan, and some even share a friendly
nod when they encounter him.
Coonoor-based Sivan rose to fame for his
service, since he crossed lonely forests and
threatening mountain terrain every day to
deliver post. The 66-year-old is now a social
media sensation: he went viral last week
when the news of his retirement, which was
in March, broke.
“I started as a stamp vendor at the
Wellington Post Office in 1985,” recalls
Sivan, speaking over phone. In 2010, he was
transferred to the Hillgrove Post Office in
Coonoor. This tenure would make him
famous, but Sivan approached it rather
matter-of-factly. “I was a mail deliverer by
then, and the RS Post Office, 10 kilometres
away from Hillgrove, was the main branch
from which I collected all my letters and
parcels to be delivered,” he explains.
Man versus wild
With his precious cargo strapped on him,
Sivan had to cover six kilometres of forest
every day. “It was a lonely, dark stretch,” he
remembers. “The forest was thick and the
path was trodden by animals such as
elephants, gaur, bears, and snakes.”
Sivan walked briskly with a heightened
sense of awarneness. He knew the dangers
of the land, but was used to its workings.
Eventually, he says, he was even on nodding
terms with some of the animals.
“There was a particular fig tree that I
stopped by at noon to eat the fruit. A bear
too regularly came there to snack,” he says.
“But it never hurt me; it got used to my
presence.”
Once the forest path ended, he had to walk
for 40 minutes along a train track. “People at
the station would warn me if a train was
coming, and I stepped away 10 minutes
ahead of the expected time,” he adds.
File photo of D Sivan waking along the NMR train track near Marapallam to deliver letters
Then, there was one more obstacle he had to
face before he started delivering letters,
perhaps the most unnerving of them all: two
tunnels, each two kilometres long. “It was
pitch dark inside, and sometimes, elephants
came to rest there after a water break in the
summer,” says Sivan.
Sivan then arrived at his destination:
Vadugan Thottam. “This is where I started
delivering letters, money orders, and
registered post,” he explains, adding that he
also serviced tribal hamlets such as
Kurumbadi, where people trusted him with
money to be deposited in their post office
account, and their passbook.
“A lot of people there work at tea and coffee
estates, and will not be home on most
occasions,” he recalls.
In that case, he tracked them down to hand
over their letter or money.
He once took a bus all the way to
Coimbatore to deliver an old-age pension to
a lady who was by herself at the
Government Hospital. “I knew how badly
she needed the money,” he explains, adding,
“A lot of people I serviced depended solely
on me for their communication. I decided it
was not a bad thing to take some extra
effort.”
Sivan did not have the heart to tell any of
them that he was retiring.
“On my last day, I mentioned this to an old
lady and she started crying. I didn’t know
what to do! I just left without a word.”
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a young Alice is bored of sitting by the river
with her sister. She spots a rabbit that looks rather different and decides to follow
him on a whim. And so she heads down a rabbit hole and arrives in Wonderland.
As children, all of us who read the classic by Lewis Carroll dreamt of visiting
Wonderland ourselves some day.
But what is this land? I suppose it depends from person to person. For me, it’s a
fantasy land, but for many children who do not have anyone to look after them, it is
basic education, dignified life, and a secure future.
Such is the case for several children in Puducherry, for whom ‘she’ has created a
sort of ‘wonderland’ for the past 32 years.
She is a 53-year-old who runs Udhavi Karangal to work towards rehabilitation of
children who have nowhere to go. These include those living on the streets, coming
from tribal communities, orphans, street urchins, or any child who needs a good
education and life.
In 2001, She took a boy whose life included begging daily and eating whatever he
received as alms, under her wing and transformed his life. Today, he is an engineer
working in a MNC and is one among the 150 +children who work with Udhavi Karangal
As a part of Udhavi Karangal She runs a primary school, a boys’ home, a girls’
home, and a girls’ observation home in Puducherry.
She began her endeavour when she was only 21 years old, and it all began
with an eight-year-old boy.
“I was sitting at my friend’s house and a boy came begging and asking for
food. I told him, ‘Why do you want to beg? Come with me, I’ll feed you and
educate you’. He agreed immediately, but said that I must inform my
mother. I took him on my cycle and the first thing his mother asked was,
‘Did you bring food?’. When he said no, she started yelling and beating
him,” She recalls.
But the boy insisted that he go with her, and the rest, as they say, is history. Thanks
to him, she found her life’s purpose, she says. After he came to her house, he
brought along two more friends. She helped them get a basic education and
vocational training.
Interested in social work since she was a teenager, She was involved in the total
literacy programme in Puducherry even as a student.
I was in charge of certain areas in town and slums. Most of the parents we saw were
alcoholics and their children were ragpickers. They were dependent on their children
for food and money. I always knew I wanted to help these children, but I also dreamt
of becoming a lawyer like my grandfather. But that small boy showed me my true
calling,” She smiles.
Initially, she would enrol the children in schools and provide vocational training. “But
I was unable to help them beyond Class 10 or 12 initially. Slowly, as we grew and
built these homes, we also started our own primary school. Today, we are fully
equipped to help them with their post graduation and beyond,” she says.
When the first boy came, she rented a place next to her house. After a year, she
says, she shifted them to her parent’s home. She later bought land in Nonankuppam,
Puducherry.
Her organisation is government funded, with additional funding coming from self and
her well-wishers for provisions.
Initially, getting children to their home was a challenge, but thanks to
changes in government policies, it has become easier, she says.
“In the beginning, I would be on the roads to find these children. It was also tough
convincing the parents. But now, people know of us and they send their children to
us. It has become easier in the past 10-15 years. The government is also more
aware, with the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) and juvenile justice law,” She adds.
But even today, getting some children, like those from tribal communities, remains
challenging.
“Some parents take their children to work in brick kilns or for sugarcane cutting. My
focus now is on such children. For children whose parents don’t cooperate, we also
offer home schooling and make them complete their education through
correspondence,” She adds.
Such is her dedication to her children that she and her husband decided not to have
any themselves, as they already had 13 when they got married.
As for what She means to the kids, Balaji, who has been associated with Udhavi
Karangal since he was a child, says, “I came here in 2002, when I was about seven
years old. It was just my mother and I, and She took us under her wing. Today, I’m
an engineer working as a software developer in Chennai.”
In fact, many of the children, are engineers, nurses, paramedical staff, musicians,
and social workers. “One of my children completed MPhil and MSW and is working
as a senior child counsellor in our home. Another one did MSc [Link] and is the
principal at my school. Their bright future is my biggest victory. They are able to give
a good life to the next generation,” she says.
She is Alice