TIRUPPUR: Donning the best clothes from their wardrobe, children scamper up and down a 450 square feet-wide concrete stage. Minutes apart, the stage transforms into a concert hall and rapidly shapeshifts into anything the youngsters want it to be. By the end of the day, many competitions were won on the decorated stage at Pothampalayam Government School in Avinashi that September day in 2017. That was the students’ first time standing atop a platform, entrancing a starry-eyed audience and discovering their voices could boom across a large room. K Muthukumar watched all this from the sidelines as the auditorium, which he had built, thrummed with life.
After the school management had reached out to him, he made sure to allot Rs 2 lakh and complete the assignment of carefully measuring and carving the hall to house 350 students within a few months. As always, he made sure the room had good interiors and firm seats, and most crucially, that the project was borne from his pocket. Recalling the inauguration, the Kaikattipudur resident says, “I felt elated. I found the innocence, simplicity, and happiness on the children’s faces. This was a proof that money cannot buy happiness, but social work can.”
So far, Muthukumar has built three auditoriums in government schools across Avinashi taluk. The other two are a 700-square feet one built at Rs 8 lakh at a government girls higher secondary school and a 420-square feet one at Rs 5 lakh at a government middle school. The latter has a special touch of stone plaques of freedom fighters, he adds.
Muthukumar aims to overcome the lack of facilities in government schools through these endeavours. His organisation ‘Arivuchudar Avinashi Trust’ offers financial aid to poor students from rural areas. He also provides a stage to students at government schools, to catch up with the large gleaming auditoriums at private schools, where they can showcase their talents.
A Nirmala, headmaster of Devarapalayam Government School, which has 192 students, says, “We were forced to erect a temporary stage during annual day functions. Based on our request, Muthukumar brought a building approval plan and immediately built a small auditorium.” The students now have a permanent structure for all events, she says.
Muthukumar’s interest in building school auditoriums came to him later in life. He started as a fancy shop owner in 1998 and later, moved to a telecom business agency. Currently, a furniture showroom owner, his path to social service took root in 2003 when his mother Krishnaveni — a government school teacher — died of cardiac arrest at 52.
“Despite suffering from diabetes and heart problems, my mother would stress taking special care of government school students as she believed they were socially disadvantaged. She would often note that such students, mostly from lower-income families, must be supported,” he says. His father Krishnamoorthy, too, was a government school teacher. Taking a leaf from their books, Muthukumar got determined to help the students. Apart from building venues, he prints English grammar books for students in classes 5 to 10 and intends to distribute 22,000 copies of them free of cost in government schools.
Muthukumar turned 53 last month — the age where most find ways to relax. But not this Tiruppur man. “Until the end of my life, I will build more auditoriums in government schools,” he promises. True to his word, he’s back at the drawing board, making changes to the blueprint for a 700 square feet auditorium worth Rs 7 lakh at the Avinashi Boys Higher Secondary School. By August 2022, he’s confident he will see students once again finding their voices on a stage that he has set.