Kazhakkoottam: Bindu Vikraman has a new house thanks to charitable souls in the Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram.
The 25-year-old blind woman was on the verge of losing the house granted by the Thiruvananthapuram municipal corporation because her impoverished family could not afford to pay up the mandatory Rs 37,000.
Bindu has been living with her father Vikraman Asari (75) and mother Radha (70) in a ramshackle rented house at Chempazhanthi. The corporation councilor in her area, Sudarsanan, helped her successfully apply for a scheme that granted her one of the apartments built by the corporation at Kalladimukham.
There was a catch though. Bindu had to pay up Rs 37,000 as the share of the beneficiary and it was not a meager sum for the blind woman and her ailing parents. She thought her dream of living in her own house would never materialize.
Sudarsanan, meanwhile, told the mayor about the plight of the family in his ward. Mayor V K Prasanth visited the family to get a first-hand account of their condition.
He decided to follow it up and wrote to a cultural association formed by the Technopark employees to see if they could help the young woman. The representatives of the association, Pratidhwani, collected the money from their colleagues in just two days.
As much as Rs 49,000 was raised. Now the fund was in excess. The fund was passed on to the mayor, who immediately released the house to Bindu.
The techies then went to Bindu’s house along with the mayor and the councilor to hand over Rs 12,000 that was left after depositing for the house.
Pratidhwani was represented by secretary Rajiv Krishnan, executive member Vineeth Chandran, A R Renish, Vimal Raj and A K Joshi.
