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Our esteemed Chief Guest Sunil Kumar,
Thirumathi Poonam Sunil, Thirumathi Radha
Mahale, our Managing Trustee U.
Prabhakar
Rao, President of the parent organization
SGS Sabha K.R. Kamath, Members of the Board
of Trustees, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Martin Luther King spoke of a dream. “He
spoke of a dream he had”. I speak of a dream
fulfilled. What was the dream?. Who had the
dream?. How has it been fulfilled?.
For years, scores of members of the SGS
Sabha, members in India and members abroad
have been asking for a Old Age Home. The
Managing Committee of the SGS Sabha is to be
congratulated for their collective and
selfless efforts on getting up this Home.
It has been written and it has been said
that “Truth is stranger than fiction”. Here
is an illustration, a live illustration. Our
92-year old Sabha, SGS Sabha, with its
outstanding and unsurpassed record of social
work in the fields of education, health care
and poverty had been thinking of more
avenues of social work. For this a
Charitable Trust was formed in 2003 and I am
privileged to be a member. Soon the Trust
identified an Old Age Home as a felt need.
We looked for land or a building within the
City and we looked on the outskirts. Neither
land nor building was available and the
Project got deferred and deferred. Many like
me were even beginning to wonder whether an
Old Age Home will come up in our life time.
Here came the Dr. K.P. Mahale Trust. Dr. K.P.
Mahale, a common man’s Physician with a
qualified Pharmacist wife Thirumathi Radha
Mahale, happily with us this evening, were
very popular in this Ayanavaram and Perambur
areas and even further a field for their
effective medications and compassion for
their patients mostly poor. The Mahales set
up the Mahale Trust in 1965 to
institutionalize their work. Dr. K.P. Mahale
passed away in 1997 at age 81. The Mahale
Trust - Radha Mahale and her daughters -
then started looking for some responsible
and respected institution with like minded
objectives to make over the property and
further its humanitarian objectives and
work.
If I may quote another saying “the situation
throws up the man”. Our Sabha was looking
for a suitable venue for an Old Age Home and
Dr. Mahale Trust for another suitable Trust
to make over.
At this juncture, crucial juncture, K.R.
Baliga, earlier of the Indian Audit and
Accounts Service, and currently Hon.
Treasurer of the SGS Sabha, came up as the
Architect of the merger and our Managing
Trustee Prabhakar Rao and Treasurer Arjuna
Pai worked out all legal requirements and
the High Court of Madras was pleased to
approve the merger in March 2004. C.J. Nayak,
Hon. Secretary, SGS Sabha, popularly known
as Ranjan and his team of dedicated
colleagues in the Managing Committee are the
builders who put the works together to make
this Home, this beautiful reality that you
see before you.
Right from India achieving independence in
1947 the Police have been under instruction,
repeated instruction, to be helpful to the
public, particularly the common man. Tamil
Nadu Police, as in many other respects, is
in the forefront, right in the forefront in
complying with this instruction.
Way back in 1956, Mrs. Parvathi Rajaratnam,
the wife of the Inspector General of Police,
joined Padmabhushan Mary Clubwala Jadhav,
the founder President of the Guild of
Service - India’s foremost Social Service
Agency. In August 1956, a fete was organized
by the Guild of Service and the Chennai
Police at the SIAA grounds. The net proceeds
of that fete was the genesis of the Tamil
Nadu State Police Benevolent Fund and I was
its Secretary. It is, therefore, apt and
proper that today we have a senior Police
Officer for inaugurating this Home.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Sunil Kumar, Joint
Commissioner of Police, Central, sits and
works, works effectively, from the first
floor of the Commissionerate at Egmore, a
floor on which I sat and like to believe
also worked 48 years back 1956 - 1958 as Dy.
Commissioner, Crime. For some time now Sunil
Kumar stands a step higher holding the
higher post, Joint commissioner - midway to
that of Commissioner which post also I was
privileged to hold 34 years back with the
love and affection of the people of Chennai
for over 4 years 1971-75 on the way to the
top as Director General, Tamil Nadu 1979.
May Sunil Kumar do equally well. May he do
even better.
Old Age Homes have come to stay. In the
coming months and years there will be a
demand, a growing demand for more and more
homes, homes at different income and
different satisfaction levels. I have no
doubt, that our Sabha Management and staff,
our all-time asset, strongest asset will
rise to meet the demand.
I wish the Home all the best. |
