Instead of just giving a clarion call or coining a powerful slogan to make Tirupati green, writers and poets came together to usher in change. And one colony is in the forefront to prove that it can look beyond spreading the message by implementing it in toto.
Even as the temple city is taking steady steps towards becoming ‘plastic-free Tirupati’, the intellectual fraternity decided to strengthen the efforts of the Municipal Corporation of Tirupati (MCT) in taking the message across to the public.
The writers came up with pamphlets carrying alluring Telugu poems targeted at schoolchildren. A poem printed on the front side of the flier hails the tree as a saviour and flays plastic as the destroyer of the world. The poem on the back page by noted ‘Sathavadhani’ Amudala Balaji lashes out at plastic as having sneaked into one’s house as an unsuspecting guest and finally wreaking havoc on the host.
Given the general tendency to throw away pamphlets without reading, the writers thought of reaching out directly to one lakh households through their children studying in various schools. The students are required to let their parents read the pamphlets and affix their signature in acknowledgement. “An arrangement is being worked out with the school managements to this effect,” says Sakam Nagaraju, State organising secretary of Abhyudaya Rachayithala Sangam (ARASAM) or Progressive Writers’ Association. While the residents of the posh Varadaraja Nagar locality had initially brought out 50,000 pamphlets to be distributed among the public, it was released by Mr. Nagaraju and Mr. Balaji, along with Kendra Sahitya Akademi award winner Jillella Balaji, Kandukuri Rangasthala Puraskar winner B. Ramachandra Reddy along with the colony residents association’s president and secretary P. Ramachandran and Ravindra Babu. Having been declared a model ward, the colony is known to have conducted many literary and cultural activities and was in the forefront in extending tsunami relief and the recent Kerala cyclone relief to the victims.