Meeting with a dear old friend

Tuesday January 9th 2024 

We had arranged to meet up with our old friend Sekar this morning at Pachaikili. Sekar was the RCO ( rural community officer) at RUHSA from our earliest visits here in 1991 and 1996. We really struck gold in having him designated to look after us because he is an intelligent man who has a huge sense of duty to his work with the poorest in the community. 

Sekar has now been retired for five years ( I think) but he retains an interest in Pachaikili and is much respected by the staff here. Many years ago in the 90s Sekar came to England and stayed with us. During his stay we tried to give him as much experience as possible of British early years education. He grasped underlying principles really well and took back what he’d learned and subsequently used it in the ongoing training he gave to the teachers in our little nursery schools ( back then there were 3 ). 

After we had caught up on family and how they all were, we talked about how Pachaikili is now. He knew immediately that there are two big issues: the urgent need to replenish the play equipment and the fact that the staff have only once in the last five years had their annual Christmas bonus and their incremental pay increase. He remembered that I had written this out very clearly st the end of the last visit, and I explained that I raise both issues each year at the annual general meeting of FOV ( Friends of Vellore) His main conclusion is that there is a failure of RUHSA staff ( Charles I think) to implement this. Funds have been sent by FOV to buy play equipment. We decided that I must spell out to Dr Biswajit very clearly what needs to happen! 

Sekar had brought a bag of small chocolate sweets for the school. He explained that recently at home they had a pooja ceremony for Bala who I think is a child-god. Being a child this god loves chocolate. The bag was left over from gifts to chocolate-loving Bala! 

Sekar is seated next to Andy. Also in the picture is Karunamurthi, who came to see us after I got Sekar to explain that we really didn’t have time to come to eat at his home!! Karunamurthi was an important person in the early days of our visits, as he was head of the weavers cooperative in Kamanchamanpet. Bishopston Trading worked with him for many years on the production of cloth for their garments. Now again he is working with Jaki on cloth weaving for the line of children’s clothes she is designing and having made in the village. 

From the school we went next for lunch at the government primary school which we visited a few days ago. Heaven knows why, but we had been invited by the teachers and one of them had made food for us. Again the familiar pattern of us seated in front of tables, someone ( Balaji I think!) designated to chop down banana leaves for our plates, and then interested gawping at what we are, with lots of attempts to refill the plate as soon as we’d managed to eat anything! The daughter of the teacher who’d cooked the food ( after she got up at 5 a.m to prepare!) was there specially to communicate with us. She’s at VIT ( Vellore institute of technology) doing a Phd in physics. Yet another daughter of the village studying STEM.