As the students of Zamorin's Higher Secondary School, Kozhikode, looked on in surprise, actor Sunny Wayne alighted from his car on the campus with huge boxes stacked in his hands and the rest in his car. Soon, the actor was surrounded by students, who did not bother to hide their delight and addressed Sunny by the names of various characters he has played. The boxes that Sunny was carrying contained books and he was in the school as part of a project called Ente Classroom Ente Library (My classroom My Library). “We live in an age when technology has invaded every space and monopolised our time. E-books and Kindle versions are highly popular with readers. But who can resist the allure of reading books with their fine print and turning over the leaves of cream-colfoured paper with that distinct smell. I wanted the kids here to experience the magic that only books can provide, which I have enjoyed,” he explains. The actor gifted 500 books worth Rs 40,000 to the school. A lot of thought and care went into the selection of each book, he says. The books have been carefully curated keeping in mind the sensibilities of the children and the subjects that they need to be educated about. There is fiction, non-fiction, science fiction, short stories, memoirs, fairy tales, self-help books, poetry, travelogues etc. both in English and Malayalam. Mark Twain, Enid Blyton, Ruskin Bond and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson will jostle for space with Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, O.V. Vijayan, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, M.T. Vasudevan Nair, Madhavi Kutty, K.R. Meera and Sara Joseph. Sunny informs that the idea came up over a conversation he had with a friend, who was part of a friendship collective called ‘Kathayamama’ which means ‘tell me a story’. She informed him of the intention of gifting books to students in order to keep alive the reading habit in them. Sunny felt that such an initiative was the need of the hour and it only took him minutes to commit his time and money to buying the books for the initiative.
Swapna Ramachandran, the class teacher of Class IX, says that the idea of Ente Classroom Ente Library evolved when the teachers felt that the students were not making full use of the library. It was lucky for them that they found a benevolent human being in Sunny who himself gifted the books to the school. In turn as a token of their gratitude to the actor, the students and teachers of Zamorin’s school are planning to dedicate this academic year for reading. Later, while addressing the students, Sunny revealed that this was the same school where his wife Renjini had studied.
Sunny’s social commitment will not stop with this one school; he will be travelling to various other schools to encourage students to read books. Incidentally, director Midhun Manuel Thomas gifted a cupboard to store the books to the same school.
