CHENNAI : Agentle breeze picks up the covers of thousands of books laid carefully on a large field. Neatly placed beside one another, the collection of Classmate notebooks spell out, ‘Anandam salutes all our brave Indian martyrs’.On Sunday, Anandam, a free home for senior citizens, attempted to set the Guinness World Record for the largest sentence made with notebooks at their premises in Ambattur. The attempt was dedicated to the 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel who were killed in a terrorist attack on February 14 this year.
The attempt was made on the day of Anandam’s 16th Annual Day celebrations. The sentence consisted 7,674 notebooks and was assembled by 120 local children and 30 teachers. The participants were part of the Anandam Educational Assistance initiative, which hopes to tutor needy neighbourhood children. “This is a wonderful attempt by Anandam. As uniform forces, we go to all kinds of places and situations. We hope to inspire children, as more youth need to join the services. If they train under me for a week, you will see a tremendous change in them. We will guide and train them so that wherever they go, they will succeed,” said CRPF Commandant K Senthil Nathan.
Other guests of honour were Lieutenant Commander Ranganathan, Air Marshal (retd) S Varthaman, father of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, and the families of the two martyred CRPF personnel from Tamil Nadu.“If he was here, he would be very proud and happy. He used to tell me that I would never understand what an honour it was to die for your country, and that I would only understand when he dies for his country. I just never expected it to be so soon,” said A Krishnaveni, wife of Subramaniam G, one of the martyred jawans. The families were honoured with a plaque at the event.
The attempt, which has been recorded with the Guinness Book of Records, Asia Book of Records and Limca Book of Records, was suggested by a few senior citizens at Anandam after the Pulwama attacks, said managing trustee Geetha Ramamoorthy.
“They were affected by it, so we got together to do something to honour our jawans. This is also our way of pleasing the land Gods, because before the senior citizen home was built, we set a Guinness Record on this land, and now, we hope that this record will bless the land for the new building for the education of children with special needs,” she said. Anandam had set a Guinness World Record for the longest rangoli in 2005.