For generations his family have been snake catchers, but Muthu dreams of becoming a policeman

Thank you for enabling Muthu to get a good education.

Muthu’s father, Babu, and his mother, Shiva, can trace their family back five generations and remembers that they all lived in Ponpadi in the colony marked out for Irulars. Irulars are a community that trades in snakes- snake catching, venom collection, treating people bitten by snakes etc. With the current Government regulations on hunting snakes, the Irulars are finding it harder and harder to make an honest living. The family now subsists on the money that Shiva can bring home by collecting and selling firewood from the forest.

For generations, the members of the Irular community have been illiterate, but the family now realizes that they need an education to survive in the modern world. Muthu is studying in grade 4 in the local village school. He and his sister, Deviki who is in grade 9, are the first in their family to learn to read and write.

To ensure that her children never have to live the life Shiva and Babu live, their parents have taken care to ensure that the children have never learnt any of their art and instead have learnt to fear snakes as most children do. Shiva tells us when we ask her what she hopes Muthu will grow us to be, “Muthu tells us he would like to be a policeman. We think that is a good decision. We don’t know how we will afford to send him to school after tenth standard but we will try as much as we can.”

When Muthu was enrolled for the Eureka classes conducted in his school two years back his teacher Shashikala remembers him being very difficult to work with, “Muthu would hardly come to school. When he did come he was constantly distracted and obviously could perform few academic tasks. Because I knew how much his family wanted him to study I took the liberty to spend extra time with him sometimes making him stay back late well against his wishes (I got permission from his parents). Over time he saw that it was getting easier. We now see a lot more of him in school and I don’t need to force him to do any of the tasks, if anything I now have to force him to go home!”

Ponpadi’s Irular colony is closer to the Main village than the BC colony is. Here 35 Irular families live with their children. The families share the same aspirations for their children. Ponpadi’s Irulars are now no longer in the Snake business, the new generation know none of the secrets of the snake trade but they can all read, write, do arithmetic and live with their heads held high.

Thank you for ensuring that Muthu continues to get a good education.