Celebrating Deepavali SYMA Way - at SYMA Growth Tuition Centre 2017

Deepavali ‘the festival of lights’ is always enchanting – an occasion to wear new clothes, eat sweets, burst crackers, be with friends and relatives – a festivity which brings enjoyment…. The festivity could be felt in the air even before a fortnight, when one walks either in T Nagar area, where every shop be it selling Gold, silver or clothes – are overcrowded – the entire area would be flowing with people jostling to buy more and more.  In our childhood, a small sum of rupees spent would provide a bagful of crackers which would be our pride possession of exhibit to friends and neighbours.    The reasoning of festivals is to make people happy – sharing of happiness by being with the people, sharing sweets and paying obeisance to elders.  SYMA stands for all the social values.  For creating a better tomorrow, we are striving to provide quality education to poor students.  Only education can uplift the poor to higher echelons – we are creating the infrastructure and are striving to help the poor children, [some of them - first generation students] by providing quality tuition assistance throughout the year in organized manner.  At our fulltime tuition Centre – SYMA Growth, we are now training 115 students [X – Tamil & English medium; +2 Commerce & Science Groups English] in our tenth year of operation [2017-18] We talk to them, nurture them, guide them, make them understand the good and bad and realize the need for studying well. We strain ourselves to make them feel happy – with Deepavali around the corner, if the students are to be asked, what would make them happy – there would be a list [no our students will not say ‘holidays’ !!]

Today (Sunday, 15^th Oct 2017) as the students entered, they were made to assemble in the front hall of NKT Boys High School, little would have they expected what was to follow.  In a well organized planned move [TJ Ramani, Kasthuri, SRP, Sadagopan, Sanjeevi, Mani, Sudarshan, Venkatesh, MK Prema mami, Meyyur Kannan and many others] SYMA gave them some gifts. As they assembled at 10 am, in a small speech Yours Truly welcomed them, greeted them ‘wishes for Happy and safe Deepavali celebrations’.  Mr Sridharan, REtd Official of State Bank of Travancore and R Kannan, Trade Union leader of Postal employees and others greeted the students providing them insightful information on the need to stay focussed and feel confident of doing well in future. The students were given Deepavali gifts and glee on their faces will have to be seen to be felt. SYMA supported in this endeavour by Sri AMR Kannan (our ex-office bearer, now in USA) Mr VA Seshadri [our member, now in USA]; Mr TK Mani, Triads [ through our committee member Mr Srinisavan (Fallam)] – the gift packet consisted of o   Shirt bit [for boys] / chudidhar material [for girls] o   250gm sweets packet o   1 veshti and one saree for their parents The package costs overall around Rs.85000/- overall and we thank our donors for making this happen and our volunteers for the good work in procuring and packing. One often gets queried on when one should start doing social work, how much one should have to spend for the society, and how much of time, one should devote weekly or monthly .. .. ..  there are answers readily available – not only by looking at our founder members and those who continue to serve SYMA and thereby the society – there are 2 boys Venkatesh & Naveen ~ both of them are studying 11^th and this year they have been coming daily to our Tuition center and helping our coordinator Mrs Thara in her daily chores in administration.  Such commitment and zest for social service is rare ~ SYMA found it necessary to honor them and they were the first recipients of ‘Deepavali Gifts’ for Growth students. Come join us, support us ~ together we will strive to ensure that the society is much better place to live. With regards – S. Sampathkumar
15^th Oct 2017.