Bapu memories to flood Kochi outskirts

KOCHI: Muppathadom, a tiny village on the outskirts of Kochi, will have a unique experience with Sriman Narayanan, a local hotelier, getting ready to supply every household in the village with a copy of My Experiments with Truth, the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi. The project, the first of its kind in the country, will be inaugurated by the well known Gandhian P Gopinathan Nair on April 3 at a function to be held at the Muppathadom government high school.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Sriman Narayanan, the person behind the project, said that this was an attempt to spread the message of love, compassion and other values of life in a world marked by selfishness and lack of values. On the inaugural day, the copy of the autobiography will be handed over to seven students belonging to seven wards of Muppathadom village.

The village has nearly 3,000 households and each household would be provided with the copy, Mr. Narayanan said. Another 1,000 copies would be given to the two schools in the village, he added.

The total cost of the project including the cost of the copies and other activities has been estimated at Rs 5 lakhs, he said. To ensure that everyone reads the autobiography of the Father of the Nation, the project plans to organize a series of events in the coming months.

Talks by prominent persons on the relevance of the Gandhian worldview in contemporary life, ward-level discussions on Gandhian ideas, a quiz based on Gandhi and written examination on Gandhism will be held three months after the completion of the distribution of the copies.

Mr. Narayanan, who runs a restaurant named Dwaraka, is known for making his place a reading room for newspaper readers in the area. He subscribes to all Malaylam and English newspapers daily and around 1,700 people visit his restaurant to read the newspapers every day.