We go by need not by creed
Published in Sunday Tomes of India August 7, 2005 By Sumati Yengkhom/TNN Howrah: Eight-year-old Urmin looks older than her age. At this tender age she knows what's brown sugar, the drug her father peddled for a living. Bubbly Sabina hated the uncles who thronged her house. They wanted to buy the "stuff" from her mother. The reluctant seven-year-old helped her widowed mother wrap brown sugar and heroin in paper packets. Hundreds of children like Urmin and Sabina have been driven … [Read more...]
Article published in The Statesman 24th April 2004 By Kastuir Basu The chatter of hundreds of tiny tots neatly attired in clothes that have seen better days, clutching books and bags, comes across as a grotesque anachronism in a dingy lane that reverberates to the sound of hammers, tongs and iron rods. At another time it would be hard to distinguish the dilapidated red building of the Samaritan Help Mission in Howrah from the others around with the usual carts laden with sheets of … [Read more...]
Published in The Value Age 21 June 2003 By Dipanita Nath Though situated cheek by jowl against similar unpainted buildings, it is difficult to miss the Samaritan Help Mission at Noor Md Munshi Lane, Tikiapara, Howrah. A line of tiny tots, neatly attired albeit in cloths that have seen better days, inevitably signals the landmark building flanking a byland. This is where Mr Mamoon Akhtar, Mr Shah Alam and thee other invested all their savings to chase a dream. Their mission was … [Read more...]
The Sunday Express April 11, 2010 MAMOON AKHTAR, was a student of a reputed English-medium school in Howrah. When he was in Class IX his parents could no longer pay his school fees and as a result he had to drop out of school. Now, decades after the incident, Mammon has not forgotten the pains of being forced to quit school. At present he runs a school in Tikiapara in Howrah with about 2,000 students who just pay Rs 5 per month. Mamoon, who used to work as a librarian and give private … [Read more...]