A ray of hope...cut short

It was the year 2009. I was fresh out of college and was working in my first job as a reporter with a city based web portal. Though travel and lifestyle were my forte fleeting into the human interest stories every once in a while was always a welcoming change. On one such occasions while flipping through a local daily I came across a very small write up about an old age home run by two young men. Now what's so interesting about it? These guys , in their early twenties, were professionals working with well known MNCs. The old age home was an outcome of their passion towards social service that consumed almost all their off-work hours. Now that makes an interesting story, i though. A story that needs to be told to everyone. In the urban rat race where we often get engrossed in consumerism and self-consumption, the though of helping the needy and giving back to the society often remains, just a thought.So i asked my boss to allow me to cover this story and gladly he did. On reaching the old age home i met Parthasarathy. One of the founders. He was a young, energetic man. Quite jovial and friendly. We chatted for a while about their inception, the residents of the home, how he manages to run it on his own, what keeps him going and stuff like that.While he spoke, he kept doing his daily chores at the old age home like giving bath to the bedridden ones, feeding them, going to each one of them and inquiring about how their day. He also introduced me to the residents. I was amused to see how this young guy, just few years older to me, could posses so much compassion and care. When most of us cared about earning a good salary, achieving our dreams and scaling high on our social status, here was this guy who was giving a new leash of life to the ones abandoned by their own people.

My meeting with Parthasarathy lasted for few hours but the incredible impression this guy left on me lasts till today. So much so that a person like me who is terrible at remembering names has till date not forgotten his pure Tamil name. So this X'mas when i was hunting for the poor and needy on the streets for sharing some homemade Christmas treats, my husband suggested a more organised way. Why not associate myself with an NGO? So the first thing that came to my mind was Parthasarathy. Like most of you, the changing phone syndrome has made me lose most of my old contacts. So i headed to the cyber space to get back in touch with him. Even after my repeated attempts and searching on almost all social and non-social sites I couldn't find Parthasarathy. Little did i know why. Dead men don't make their presence online. After changing my key words from Parthasarathy to Aarathy (His charitable trust) i could finally reach out to them, and then came the horrible news. Parthasarathy is no more. Horrible indeed. Whats's more horrible is to know that he was a murdered. And if that sends a chill down your spine then better i not reveal that he was married for barely 6 months and his wife was 4 months pregnant at the time. Ever since i came to know about him i can't get over this question. Why bad things happen to good people?

More than expressions of my emotions through this post i would like you to know  about this noble soul who is no more among us. The aim is simple: a tribute to this fantastic social servant i feel fortunate to come across. And if in case you are curious to know more about the trust this might help http://www.aarathy.org/about.html . This post doesn't intend you to send in your donations or help. But if you feel to do so, you can. There are many well known NGOs but NGOs like these that are run by individuals are the ones who need your help the most. The trust is now managed by Parthasarathy's friend Suriyakumar.