Chennai’s Velammal Matriculation Higher Secondary School bagged the lion’s share of medals in the 1st National School Chess Championship held at the Ludlow Castle Sports Complex in the capital.

Velammal made a clean sweep in the Under-17 and Under-15 team championships and topped the Under-13 and Under-9 categories.
In the individual championship also most of the medals were bagged by the Velammal students.

In all, over 600 school children participated in the 14 various individual categories ranging from U-5 to U-17.
Host city Delhi had something to cheer about in the Under-5 category where Garv Rai of Modern School, Vasant Vihar, won the gold medal.
Amongst other aspirants from the city, Nishant Malhotra of Bal Bharti School, Dwarka, took silver in the Under-17 open category, as did Manan Rai of Amity International School secured the same medal in the Under-13 section, Sarthak Mahajan (Under-15) and Aansh Gupta (Under-11).

Manpreet Singh, Harshal Shahi, Aarchi Agarwal and Abir Sinha won bronze medals in their respective categories.

source: http://www.DeccanChronicle.com / Home> Channels> Nation> North / by DC Correspondent / November 01st, 2012

Coimbatore:

S Sabari Venkat is just like any other smart 10 year-old-kid with a sweet smile and a sharp mind ready with an answer to almost every question thrown at him. But sit with him for two minutes and the truth will hit us like a sharp slap across our face. This fifth standard student who is also one of the class toppers is flashing the smile at us from his inner world which is constantly black, devoid of colours and any optical sense of recognition. Sabari was born blind in both eyes and though his retina’s react to light flashed at his left retina, it does not reach him since he is suffering from more than 90%  blindness in his left eye and total blindness in his right eye. Sabari had accompanied other differently-abled children to an event held at a private hotel here in the city.

“It was very good experience all of them said good things to me,” says Sabari at his residence near Perianacikenpalayam.

Later in the day as we entered his modest rented house comprising of two rooms and a kitchen adjacent to a private marriage hall in the locality, Sabari was tinkering with the volume switch of the television set. He constantly sits in front of the television and ‘listens’ to the programs aired on various channels, especially those which telecast cartoons. With great concentration and excitement he sits in front of it and draw faces and shapes to the conversations and sounds from the TV speakers in his mind

“He sits in front of the television and follows the conversations very keenly. He stays completely glued to it often,” says K Sreenivas, Sabari’s father.

Sabari is presently a student of Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya Swami Shivananda Higher Secondary School near Perianaickenpalayam along with normal children. He still manages to be one of the top scorers in the class often in the second or third position. The school authorities also support him in his academics and a teacher from the institution helps as his scribe during examination. Sabari is also a good orator and has won several competitions for chanting shlokas from Bhagavad Gita. He also regularly dresses up as Swami Vivekananda and is greatly inspired by his teachings narrated to him by his father K Sreenivas and his teachers.

“Swami Vivekananda lived for just 39 years but managed to achieve great things within that short span. Not everyone is able to do so in life,” says Sabari.

K Sreenivas, an agrarian and his wife S Neelaveni waited long for the birth of their first child and was initially shattered when they were told that Sabari will not be able to see them or anything else around him after his birth.

The couple was earlier residing near Kozhinjampara near Pollachi along the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border but they decided to sell of their agriculture land and relocate to Coimbatore city to ensure that Sabari is not left behind either in his education or medical treatment under any circumstances. The couple had tried to bring light to at least one of his eyes and tried to get his left eye treated. Though doctors diagnosed him with cataracts and an ensuing complication called Synechia which could not be completely cured so far.

“We used to live in a semi-rural area and in those places if there is a handicapped kid in the family people tend to talk about it constantly. Some do it out of sympathy, some because of superstition but we made a decision that our son need not grow up listening to it and so we came to Coimbatore,” Sreenivas adds.

source: http://www.TheHindu.com / Home> City> Coimbatore / TNN / September 16th, 2012

Madurai:

With villages that used indigenous methods of water harvesting and storing being forced to look for alternative means, Kottanathampatti in Madurai is jubilant as it has been given a desalination plant to address its drinking water needs.

Kottanathampatti, identified a model village in the district, boasts of self-sustenance but for potable water. Relief came on Saturday when a desalination plant put up at a cost of Rs 6 lakh started functioning. The plant has an automatic dispenser that supplies 18 litres of water for Rs 2. The villagers need to drop in two one-rupee coins and collect the water from the plant, that has a capacity of 5,000 litres.

“The villagers can also have a pre-paid account, wherein they should pay Rs 100 and get their fingerprints registered. These people need not pay every time they want water. Instead, they should identify themselves in the fingerprint reader and collect water. The idea of the project is to ensure potable water for all villagers,” said collector Anshul Mishra who inaugurated the plant.

This is not the first time desalination plants have come to the rescue of drinking water-starved villages in Tamil Nadu. The villagers of K Ramanathapuram in Dindigul district have established a community-funded desalination plant to turn the highly saline ground water to consumable standards.

Mishra said the district administration was gearing up to implement similar projects in other villages too.

The district administration has selected one village in all unions and was addressing the needs of the people there, he added.

Kotanathampatti was chosen as a model village by former collector U Sagayam to show the way of self sustenance and development with assistance from the local body and the district administration. The village has also begun a green cover drive aimed at improving the groundwater table. To begin with, each of the 3,000 households have planned to raise one tree.

Another key aspect of “project self sustenance” is to make the village 100 per cent literate by ensuring that there are no dropouts. K Kandappan, panchayat president, notes that though the village was endowed with adequate resources, potable water was the only major problem.

With the desalination plant, that problem has been addressed and now the village is also planning to go in for solar power production.

source: http://www.articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / Home> City> Madurai / by M Mayilvaganan, TNN / September 09th, 2012