No Child Should be Called an Orphan

My earliest memories of Manjuma were of a rather intimidating person, always clad in white (which I later learnt was khadi), severely pulled back pepper-salt hair and thick- rimmed glasses with high-powered lenses. She came often to my parental home as our families were close friends and my grandmother and she advocated fiercely for independence and worked together in the freedom movement. My father often recalled hours spent in his childhood, playing cricket with Manjuma’s sons on the grounds of their sprawling bungalow on Poonamallee High Road.

My own interactions with Manjuma, as an adult, began somewhere around 1991. My younger child had just started school and I thought it was time I got involved in the institution which had formed a large part of my childhood. In one of her visits home, I tentatively asked her if I could come to Bala Mandir to meet her. My aunt Sarojini Rajan was already volunteering there (she was quite the stalwart and a fixture in the office, along with Lakshmi Gopal’s mother Vedamma). They used to share the same auto to get to Bala Mandir.

Rukmini (Minnie) Amirapu