Don’t lock up kids at home, give them to this messiah!

Shilpa P | NT

Mysuru: Having known the pain of nourishing a mentally challenged son for over 20 years and more so in a village, this man has turned a messiah for such mentally challenged kids and their parents who are farmers, in ten villages of Mysuru taluk.

Marigowda, native of D Salundi village, of Mysuru taluk, a building contractor by profession, is the one who has taken up this noble cause of taking care of these kids who used to be locked inside the house by helpless farmer couples when they went to work in their fields.

Speaking to News Trail, Marigowda explained, “When my son Sathish was four year old and still could not speak, I and my wife Mangala rushed him to All India Institute of Speech and Hearing in Mysuru for speech therapy. Soon we realized that he could not eat or handle any of his small chores on his own. We then took him to several doctors including neurologists in NIMHANS, only to be told that Sathish was mentally challenged. We moved from our village to Mysuru city and tried to send him to some special school, but all that could not help much as the problem was intense, and over a period of time, we learnt to manage him on our own though both me and my wife are illiterates.’’

He added, “Unlike cities, where working parents have the option of dropping kids at institutes which take care of mentally challenged kids, in villages farmer parents are forced to tie the legs of their mentally challenged kids to legs of cots and lock them up inside the house after giving them the bath and feeding them, before they go to the fields. These parents were forced to do the same whenever they had to attend family functions too, to avoid being mocked by relatives. After learning from my personal experience, I started the special school for mentally challenged and named it, “Basaveswara Nava Chethana Trust” in D Salundi village in Mysuru taluk in July 2019 with four children including one girl and three boys, he said.

Marigowda informed, “Now we have 24 mentally challenged students from ten villages of Mysuru taluk, including seven girls, all between six and 30 years of age, six children from D Salundi village, three each from Daaripura-Bannadpura, and Dhanagalli villages, two each from Beer ihundi and Doora villages, one each from Gopalpura, Kellalli and Mundgalli villages, and four from Udbur village. We pick these children in our own van, from as far as 15km and take care of them from 9am to 5pm and drop them back home in the evening.’’