Wednesday,April1,2009

ABYTE OF LIFE

BACK IN HELM?

SRK backs Dada

FREE CIRCULATION

Vol. 3No. 61

E-campaign 2.0

Read my political blog

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A start-up entrepreneur and aIT professional have started annon-governmental organisation‘Deepam’ to foster education forthe under-privileged children

PAGE 03

REACHING OUT

ERGO

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

NAMMA CHENNAI

3 arrested for dowry harassment andabetting suicide

minjikarai police on Tuesday arrested aman, his mother and aunt on chargesof dowry harassment and abettingsuicide. The victim was Jayanti (28), whowas married to the accused Sriram (32),an ironing man residing inMuthumariamman Colony, Aminjikarai.The couple had married on February 6,2009. It was an arranged married and thevictim’s family had already given goldand cash as dowry at the time of thewedding, said police.Kamalamma (60), Sriram’s mother,repeatedly tortured Jayanti, demandingmore money as dowry. Kamalamma’ssister, Muniamma (55), also joined Sriramand his mother in physically and mentallytorturing Jayanti.Meanwhile, on March 27, Jayanti’s bodywas found ﬂoating in a well close to herhome. Sriram and his mother told policethat she had committed suicide due tohealth issues. However, growingsuspicious Jayanti’s father Shanmugamlodged a police complaint with theAminjikarai police. Jayanti’s body wassent for an autopsy.The results that came on Mondayconﬁrmed that Jayanti had committedsuicide by jumping into the well. Thethree were arrested for abetting suicideand on charges of harassment for dowry.They were remanded to custody and sentto Puzhal Prison on Tuesday.

Ergo Correspondent

ucked in East MadaStreet, Thiruvanmi- yur is Juice Tree - anelixir of good health– which one could ignoreas another juice shop.But it takes one a few minutes to explore the“wellness drinks” on themenu.From fruit nectars tocarefully selected fresh juices and milkshakes, which are prepared asprescribed in the Ayurve-da, a drink here promisesmany health benefits.Some of the interesting refreshers we spotted in-clude Munna Bhai, KarmaTail and Threesome.Karma Tail, for exam-ple, is a cocktail of papayaand apple and is recom-mended for people withulcers, intestinal disordersand anaemia, whileThreesome is a cool blendof orange, sweet lime and honey.Pavan, one of the partners, saysthe use of refined sugar in fruit juices usually offsets the healthbenefits these drinks have to of-fer. So he recommends having them with honey and browncountry sugar. “Almost all our juices are pure nectar and if wedo have to add water, it is alwaysmineral water,” he says.My other picks Celestial Citrusand Lips Flare were equally amazing. While the former is ablend of orange, grape and pi-neapple, the later tasted like Vir-gin Mary with a twist. The chef wouldn’t tell us what that wasthough!The milkshakes againhave exotic names – Ba-zooka Blend, Pharoah’sFavorites and Disney Nut. These are madefrom a combination of exotic fruits and nuts inskimmed milk and hon-ey.However, Nutty Pro-fessor, a blend of straw-berry and nuts, is thehottest moving drink.Surprisingly, each of thedrink has a secret ingre-dient that the chef wouldn’t re-veal.The surprise package at JuiceTree, though, is their selection of vegetable juices. They are amaz-ing healers, says Sridhar, who be-lieves that this is his way of giving back to society.Try Juice Tree if you are ahealth freak moving towards nat-ural wellness or just a plain juiceaficionado like me looking forsome great refreshment at an af-fordable price.

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Too Good for Critics is a weekly column to celebrate NammaChennai’s ‘Kaiyendi Bhavans’ and small eateries. If you can think of asimilar place, mail us at feedback@goergo.in

For some fresh and healthy drink stop at Juice Tree

Juice in time

How to get there

The joint is behind theMarudeeswarar Temple inEast Mada Street.

Call

: 65552656 (for homedeliveries within 3 km inand around Thiruvanmiyur)

P H O T O : R . R A V I N D R A N

Throwing your weight around?

Heinz Nutrition Foundation India and the Indian Institute of Nutritional Sciencesare jointly organising a free consultation camp to handle overweight and obesityproblems at Nutrition Care Center, Ankur Manor, First Floor, 182 EVR Periyar HighRoad, (Poonamallee High Road), Kilpauk from March 30 to April 14. Call 28360766to ﬁx your appointment.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Karunakaran an aspiring pi-lot has learnt the skill inpowerpoint. Muthulakshmi has now overcome the fear of speaking in English in front of people.

hey neither have any educational backgroundin social work nor arethey teachers. But theirurge to give back to the socie-ty, made twenty six-year-oldKarthikeyan Vijaykumar, astartup owner of ExcedosMarket Services Pvt Ltd andhis friend Ram Viswanathan,a distinguished technical en-gineer at IBM, to teach under-privileged kids under the ban-ner of Deepam since last year.Ram, in his free time, whodid some social work in USA for seventeen years says, “Af-ter coming to India, I wantedto continue the good work. When I got together with Kar-thikeyan, we thought of spreading our computerknowledge to deserving kids. We approached government-run schools and self helpgroups and then started toteach at Nalandama Commu-nity Centre at Besant Nagar,Pudhiyador center and Olcotthigh school on weekends.Karthikeyan adds: “Incourse of time, we learnt they have a spark and are intelli-gent and hence we also start-ed to focus on three otherareas – general awareness,English skills and personality development.”Over a period of one year with the help of dedicatedvolunteers – Archana Chau-han, Meera Sivakumar, Vijay Kaushik, Anbu, Balaji Ragha-van, Shweta, S N Basu andMohan, who teach between2pm and 4pm, Deepam hasmanaged to maintain a reg-ular 20-week class every Sat-urday at Olcott andNalandama and at Pudhiya-dor center on Sunday.They have about thirty chil-dren for one course. Meera, amarketing consultant, and Vi- jay, an investment banker who comes from Banglaoreevery weekend say: “We feelsatisfied and happy by spend-ing our quality time teaching these kids. Our day is made when we can answer theirquestions which we ourselvesdidn’t know much about.”Basu recalls: “We werelooking for a camera to take aphoto of a session and we were amazed to note one kid’spresence of mind when hespotted a webcam. Apart from their economicconditions, they are no differ-ent from the other kids.”One can see the children re-ally actively participating andenjoying activities like quiz,debates and English wordbuilding activity.Fourteen-year-old P Prash-ant of Olcott Memorial Highschool says, “I got to know of Dhanraj Pillai and Abhinav Bindra during the GK session.The talk given by Sharath Ba-bu at the first anniversary cel-ebrations, was very inspiring and the sessions on publicspeaking has boosted my con-fidence.” At the end of thecourse, the children are givencertificates. Archana, the driving forceof Deepam’s education curri-culum, plans to focus a lot ine-learning, internet know-how and flash communica-tion in the next academic year.She says: “We want to teachlessons that would be of long term utility to the kids. Googlebrowsing and E-learning isvery important where they can get any information andalso be in touch with usthrough emails.” When we ask Karthikeyanhow they managed to draw asystematic curriculum sansany guidance from education-ists, he says: “We formed it onthe basis of our childhood ex-periences during our schooldays.But we plan to partner withlike-minded people this yearfor better results.”

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A start-up entrepreneur and an IT professional on their one year journey of Deepam – a group that fosters education amongst deserving children with volunteers from various IT companies

DEEPA VENKATRAMAN

Reaching Out

Volunteers of Deepam at a classroomin progress. (Right) Deepamco-founder Ram Viwanathan.