Destination stories : the unique fund raiser

N GopalaKrishnan with PM Narayanan Image courtesy The Hindu



This Saturday, Malayala Manorama newspaper featured a story about a gentleman called N. Gopalakrishnan who is involved in fund-raising for Institute for Palliative Medicine.



We had met Gopiettan, as we call him, about 5 years ago when The Blue Yonder had just started taking travellers to remote areas along the River Nila. He spent about a week every month in his traditionally-styled cottage called 'Vaappikudi', facing the river, mostly sitting in the portico reading and writing. His house was named after the slave his forefathers had as part of old-age feudal system in Kerala. For the occasional traveller who came visiting this region, Gopiettan makes for an ideal company. A man of letters, a close friend of writer M.T Vasudevan Nair, he entertains them with his wit and intellect while sharing anecdotes about his life in the IRAS (Indian Railways Accounts Service) and in Kolkata. His love for the railways is so great that even the gate to his cottage is designed like a level crossing! The name board written in Malayalam, Hindi and English reminds one instantly of the yellow-black railway sign boards!



A Kendra Sahitya Academy Award winner for his translation of 'Oriya classic 'Sri Radha'', Gopiettan has also translated 'The Insider', a political novel authored by earlier Prime Minister of India, P V Narasimha Rao. Malayalees though remember him for his beautiful translation of K P Ramanunni's 'Sufi Paranja Katha' (Story told by the Sufi) to English.





Sufi Paranja Katha has been made into a feature film



We met him recently again at the Institute of Palliative Medicine (IPM)). Like many citizens of Kozhikode, Gopiettan spends a few hours every week at the in-patient section at IPM. Seeing the impact the palliative care movement was having on thousands of people with terminal illness needing end of life care and the community of volunteers alike, he decided to do his bit to raise funds for the movement. He was then discussing how he planned to go about the fund-raising. When we met him after a week, he had actually traded a place with a beggar in the city as the 'spot' looked promising to 'beg'!



Rather than ask his friends for donations (which would have been far simpler and easier for him!), Gopiettan in his unique way decided to get the local community participate in this process. Elegantly dressed as always, resplendent in his royal - waxed moustache and the gold-trimmed walking stick, he cut a majestic figure as he walked about non-descript streets with a small white card requesting the public to donate Re 1 in support of the palliative care movement! Curious and amused, passers-by not just gave him the money he asked for, but impressed with his commitment and humility, many gave a lot more. In the last few months with just a few rounds of his “begging” tour, Gopiettan has collected more than a hundred thousand Rupees, in addition to raising awareness among locals in the city about the movement. With the steady inflow of small amount of cash that Gopiettan brings, IPM has now set up a separate bank account that goes by the name of 'thendu fund' (thendu means “to beg” in Malayalam).





Kozhikode Palliatve care movement: 'a beacon of hope' according to EIU report



In a world that seems bankrupt when it comes to compassion, people like Gopiettan fill us with hope. While India ranks amongst the lowest in the list of 45 countries surveyed in the recent Economist Intelligence Report on end of life palliative care, the same report highlights the palliative care initiative in Kozhikode as a beacon of hope.The report says "With only 3% of India’s population, the tiny state provides two-thirds of India’s palliative care services"



It is volunteers like Gopiettan and a movement like this that can perhaps help us dream of a 'compassionate city'.

Master carpenter of River Nila...

The village of Panniyoor on the banks of River Nila (Bharatapuzha) once decided to build a temple complex that would be better than the ones even in Heaven! The onus of building this marvel fell on their master carpenter, Perumthachan.

With a team of fine carpenters in the region, Perumthachan started the work and soon the news spread to the Heavens that the architecture of the temple complex in Panniyoor village had the potential to overshadow the splendour of the Gods. As insecure as only he could get, Lord Indra, the King of Gods himself, set out on a journey to the village to find for himself if there was any truth in these rumours. Once he saw the brilliance of the work in progress, he was overcome with envy and started plotting against the carpenters’ team.

Read the complete post on legends of Nila...posted on The Blue Yonder. blog

September 2010 newsletter from The Blue Yonder

The Blue Yonder newsletter for Sept 2010 is released. It carries destination stories from Spiti Valley, Kerala and some beautiful legends behind the origin of Onam festival. One can also find out the travel schedule of The Blue Yonder team whom you can meet in India, Europe and the USA. Read it here.

If you wish to subscribe to TBY newsletter, click here.

Airtel's shoddy customer care

impatience is becoming the virtue of customers!

On 10th of August Airtel disconnected internet connection in our office without any notice.On calling customer care, they said that there are unbilled amount for exceeding three-months-cap. This was surprise for us, as we had signed up for a unlimited download connection, which we had been using for last 4 years or so.

So we filed a complaint with Airtel Customer care on 11th, for which the customer care executive responded that he can't do anything from his side. Suggested we wait till 19th August 2010. Great!

We called various other numbers, same response. Though we requested them to restore the connection and solve other issues, they were so callous in their response and said they are helpless than requesting us to wait till 19th August.

Office functioning became difficult except for those carrying their black berries and other USB internet sticks.

Finally on 13th Aug, we decided to approach a friend who forwarded our complaint to the chairman's office introducing The Blue Yonder and the work we do etc. So within next few hours we got a call from Customer Care in charge of South India acknowledging the complaint and apologising profusely for the inconvenience caused. In no time they replaced the internet connection and suggested that by Monday 16th Aug, they will sort out the pending issues. Later on Saturday, they even sent a knowledgeable executive to check on the connections and related services in office.

Though we have the connection right now, we are still in dark about why they disconnected without even a warning ( and for what reason any way?), we still haven't heard from Airtel with a solution. We should admit that this morning we did receive a call from Airtel Customer care in Bangalore asking if the 'problem we reported is resolved?". (that too after a week!). They were not even aware that the connection was restored. So much for internal communication!

If for every single, simple issues, one need to go to Chairman's office and use your networks and connections to find solutions, we are worried about the future of customer care in this country. As a friend in telecom industry commented, "they don't care losing a client as they are busy getting even more clients as half your population are on mobile phone and probably by 2020 India will have a billion mobile connections!"

At least in those days of only one telephone company and one brand of ambassador cars, there wasn't much to expect. Now with all 'Indian shining and international customer care at your door-step', how can you blame a person for expecting some basic customer service?

Compassionate City - Gandhigiri by City Police

Police in the City of Kozhikode in Kerala were flooded by complaints of people who lost their motor bikes over the last few months. Many had also lost gold, computers and mobile phones. The Police department was in for surprise, when they arrested more than fifty nine teenagers who were from lower middle class families and some of whom who were as young as 13! What was even more interesting was that many of them were selling it for silly amounts of Rs 3,000.



Kozhikode City Police says, “Police recovered 15 bikes and seven personal computers stolen by the juvenile group from different locations. Besides, spare parts worth Rs 1 lakh was also recovered by the police. The teenagers used to steal new motorbikes with prices ranging Rs 40,000 to Rs 50,000 and put them up for sale at cheap rates ranging from Rs 3,000 to Rs 5,000 to their friends. Many of the juveniles belonged to low-income groups and broken families, but the buyers were from middle-class families. The culprits were utilizing the money received through theft for enjoining costly food, dress and mobile phones. Police will carry out further investigation and are expecting to recover more material evidences”

If the police were to follow regular procedures, they would be taken through routine course of questioning, lock-ups and year-long trials. In a typical loop of social branding as criminals, there is a hardly a way for any of them to be part of the main stream social life. Instead, Police Commissioner P.Vijayan who is credited for starting many new innovative initiatives in social policing including Student Police Cadet Project has turned a new leaf in the history of Kerala Police.

Today saw the most unique intervention of police to explore the possibilities of bringing these arrested youngsters to the mainstream and hence avoiding the near sure destiny of bring criminals of the future. Engaging the likes of palliative care movement (Institute of Palliative Medicine), few City Rotary Clubs and IMHANS (Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences) along with a group of socially active citizens, the City Police is attempting to bring the youngsters back into main-stream with social acceptability.



Dr.Jairam Ramakrishnan, consultant Psychiatrist from UK also has been pitched in to provide expert service to the youngsters. Dr. Suresh Kumar, founder director of Institute of Palliative Medicine, popularly known as “poor men’s Doctor” considers such initiatives with public private participation is a beginning to build up a “compassionate city”.



A one-room initiative that was started as a ‘pain clinic’ fifteen years ago in an anesthetist's dressing room in Kozhikode Medical College for bringing in relief to terminally ill patients has now grown into a movement comprising more than 25000 trained volunteers. Self-sustainable 300 palliative centres in Kerala is now spear-heading a social movement, not just restricted to palliative care. No wonder that such a movement is approached by various stake holders to take larger roles in the society.



Follow this space for more on ‘compassionate city project’.

Marriage proposal at 4200 MSL

'Make no mistake' leader of the group seems to be convincing our driver

We were on our way after a volley ball game with young lamas of the monastery in the picturesque village of Komic, when we came across some women who came and blocked our way. Women in Spiti Valley are quite social and confident. Since we have heard several stories about their empowerment we were more than curious to know why they would block our way.


These women refused to let our driver go. They even sat on the bonnet for a while!

We were driving from Kaza to Komic and back en-route to Langza. The Komic at an altitude above 4000 MSL is amongst one of the high altitude villages in the Himalayas.

Initially we couldn't figure out what was happening. All we could notice was that the women, especially the older ones were quite happy about blocking the road and talking to our young driver. There was also a young girl who was shying away when we looked at her, but 'making strong' statements to the driver.


volley ball with lamas in one of the highest villages in the world.

Even after ten minutes, when we realised that they had no intention to let us pass by, we got curious and asked our driver if every thing was okay! He blushed! Once again we weren't sure if we read the expression on his face correctly. By this time two women were already sitting on the bonnet while other engaged in conversation with the boy. It looked more like a cajoling towards the end, but we were totally lost on what exactly was going around.

After half an hour, our driver tried to move the vehicle slightly which was vehemently opposed by the group. They refused to let us go! Later in the afternoon when we managed to pass them, our driver told us that the women were trying to convince him to get married to a girl in their village! No wonder he was blushing. Apparently a proposal had come to him couple of months ago and he was not ready to get married at 23, and the women refuse to accept that. So every time his vehicle passes through the village with travellers, he is under siege! Poor thing.