THENI: Clad in shabby clothes and sporting long unkempt hair sits a man of wandering mind on the roadside, uttering unintelligible words. The passersby on the busy street of Andipatti Kanavai turn a blind eye towards him. N Ranjith Kumar, a pharmacist, too could have evaded the man, but being the Good Samaritan that he is, he walked towards the man, talked to him. Later, he gave him a good shave, some food and lots of love before getting him medical help at Periyakulam Government Hospital.
“Within a week, I learned the man is Manikandan (32) from Oraiyur in Tiruchy. With available details, I helped him reunite with his family. I still remember the eyes of his mother overflowing when she went home with her son. No amount of money could substitute the joy that such scenes give,” Ranjith says with pride.
For Ranjith, Manikandan is just one among several he extended his helping hands to. So far, he has admitted 43 neglected elderly persons to government-run homes in the district. That’s not all. He has helped 40 children begging on the streets, including kids from nomad communities, pursue their studies by staying at Government Nirmala Home in Bodinayakanur. He has also treated three intellectually disabled persons found wandering in the district.
The pharmacist and social worker does not confine himself to one activity. Ranjith is omnipresent in the district, from medical camps, social outreach programmes, tree plantation drives to Covid-19 awareness campaigns. He has donated his blood to children from marginalised communities, suffering from Thalassemia, at least 40 times. He is also a popular face on social media platforms. Recently, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, on social media platform Twitter, lauded Ranjiths’s service during the pandemic.
He was fifth among the seven children of a labourer couple working in a tea estate in Valparai. Ranjith and his siblings’ childhood was replete with trials and tribulations. For them, even three meals a day were a luxury. “However, my parents inculcated in us the value of helping others and showed us how to lead a disciplined life,” he says.
Ranjith studied in Class 11 and 12 at Moulana Abdul Kalam Azad Higher Secondary School in Perambalur at a madrasa. “It was at the madrasa that I learned that the will to help others is enough to transform lives. When my friends and I collected money for the Odisha cyclone relief fund, I realised one thing — life is too short and I have to help the needy in all possible ways. I started by helping the roadside beggars by providing them food, bedsheets and the like. Later, I started to admit them at government homes so that I could help transform their lives,” he says.
While the pharmacist earns a consolidated monthly salary of just Rs 15,000, he says, it’s not a problem at all. “I am spending to help the needy as much as I can. My wife P Deivamalar also encourages me. Helping others gives me satisfaction, something that never comes to you with money,” I believe that I was born to serve the needy, Ranjith signs off.