VILLUPURAM: Sacrificing her dream to buy a bicycle, an 8-year-old girl from the district has contributed her piggy bank savings to the Kerala chief minister’s distress relief fund. Due to the unabating rains in the last couple of weeks, the neighbouring State has witnessed unprecedented floods. Nearly 370 persons have lost their lives and lakhs of people have been deprived of basic needs in the deluge. Individuals and organisations from across the country and even abroad have been extending their support to Kerala by donating cash and relief materials.
Prompted by some televisions visuals of flood-hit regions, Anupriya here enquired her father Siva Shanmuganathan about the floods. When she came to know that donations could be made to help victims, the class 2 girl decided to break all four of her piggy banks and the one belonged to her younger brother Parishith Kanna.
“Anupriya started saving money in piggy banks when she was four. Every day, when I return home, she will ask for some coins and deposit them in her piggy banks, which were almost full,” said Shanmuganathan, who resides at Sivaram Nagar.
After seeing her friends playing with bicycles, Anupriya asked her father to buy one for her with the piggy bank savings. He assured her of buying a bicycle soon. However, when Anupriya had seen the visuals, she felt sad and immediately asked her father to donate the savings to the flood relief fund.“I saw the people suffering in the floods in Kerala. So I asked my father to give all the money I had saved in my piggy banks to them,” Anupriya told Express.
The little girl thought that her savings would be enough for the entire relief measures, said Shanmuganathan. However, when he had explained her about the Kerala chief minister’s fund, she, along with her father and mother Lalitha, started counting the money on Saturday evening.
Totally, she had saved `8,846 and her father rounded off the amount to `9,000, by adding the remaining money from his pocket. On the same night, Shanmuganathan sent the savings in the form of a demand draft drawn in favour of the distress relief fund. Meanwhile, Hero Cycles has announced a reward for Anupriya for her generous act. The company, in a tweet, said, “Dear Anupriya, We appreciate your gesture to support humanity in the hour of need. You would get a brand new cycle from us. Please DM your address or contact us at customer@herocycles.com”