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| Pankajaksha Kurup, Ambalappuzha, Alappuzha |
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For 40 years now, he has been engaged in building and sustaining little neighbourhood groups that will share love and live like true human beings. Pankajaksha Kurup of Ambalappuzha is a visionary of Gandhian mould. Let neighbours know each other, share their problems and resources, and thus in the transparency of dealings, find the real joy of living – that is his motto.
With this in mind, he institutionalized the vision in 1973 into a 3-tier set up. 5 families join to form the ‘tharakkoottam’ and 5 ‘tharakkoottams’ join together to form an ‘ayalkoottam’ while 5 ‘ayalkoottams’ come together to form a ‘gramakkoottam’. Every evening, the tharakkottams meet and exchange thoughts. Political or religious differences have no place in such meetings.
Kurup, who was born in 1923, completed his education including TTC from Kanjippadam, Ambalappuzha and Kakkadam. Later he started his career as a teacher in Government U.P.School, Punnapra in 1944. Author of 4 books on his vision and the approach to achieve it, he has been influenced a lot by the Gandhian life. His naturopathy too is an offshoot of the influence of Gandhiji.
A winner of the best teacher award, he has been bestowed with many more such honours. Some of them include Thakazhi Sahiteeyam citation 2002, Manaveeyam award, Poornodayam Book Trust’s G.Kumara Pillai award 2002 etc. He has requested that he may not be burdened with more awards.
81-year-old Kurup lives in Konnappad House at Kanjippadam with eldest daughter Rama. His other offsprings are Radhakrishnan, a homoeo doctor and daughter Santhi.
Even in his old age, he works ceaselessly to bring to reality the dream of removing individual suffering through collective rejoicing.
Courtesy: Jayakrishnan Mithila, Malayalam, September 19, 2003
Contributed by: Administrator
