Selfless service, simplicity, spirituality and sacrifice - in these times when such values are disappearing, there is one person who embodies all of these.
Meet Mallikarjunaiah (69) from Chikkanayakanahalli. He is known for his social service - which he has been rendering for years, without accepting money from anyone; nor has he received recognition - Mallikarjunaiah does not feel the need to be recognised for his work.
Mallikarjunaiah has built a free mini-choultry that for the poor; and for a long time now, he has been cleaning the public toilets and performing other such tasks. On the surface, these might look like petty tasks; but beneath it lies a firm belief in Gandhian ideals, and the detachment that the Bhagavad Gita preaches.
Free choultry
The Sainath Mandira on the Brahmavar Street in town is his workplace. Mallikarjunaiah, who was working as a teacher, established the Seva Trust after he gained a spiritual bent of mind and began following the preachings of Sai Baba. But most of the trust-related work had to be done by Mallikarjunaiah alone.
Opting for voluntary retirement when he still had eight years of service left, he set up a library, funding it with the money that he received upon his retirement, and some financial help from a few others.
The periodicals and spiritual books in the library helped a lot of people in the town. But since he felt that the library was being under utilised, he built two small rooms, bathrooms and toilets, arranged for water supply, and made it a mini-choultry. Today, this mini-choultry can be used, completely free of cost, by poor people from any class of society, irrespective of their caste or religion.
There are several people on the area who owe Mallikarjunaiah a lot for his selfless service over the last eighteen years.
Four years ago, the plight of the women in the Muslim Colony of the town’s Bugarimara area was pitiable; for the simple reason that the public toilet was in a very filthy state, and the TMC had made no attempts to get it cleaned. Poor Muslim women would hesitate to use the toilet; noticing this, Mallikarjunaiah approached the TMC for help, but to no avail.
Then he himself cleaned up all the filth; brought water from far away and kept it at the public toilet. From then on, Mallikarjunaiah has been looking into the cleanliness of the area.
Several people consider him a lunatic for voluntarily doing these works. But for Mallikarjunaiah, it doesn’t matter; so immersed is he in the social service he does.
Mallikarjunaiah also regularly cleans the roads and drains near the mini choultry. When the situation of one of the roads in Byalakere village near here had deteriorated, he single-handedly improved its condition. Moved by his service, a farmer gave him a sum of Rs 3,000 for the mini-choultry.
For the last 15 years, Mallikarjunaiah has been distributing free rice to many poor people, every month, and the practice continues. On the day of Sai Baba’s birthday, he distributes free saris to poor women.
Future projects
Mallikarjunaiah’s immediate goal is to expand the free mini-choultry he established. If the owner of the opposite plot grants him permission, he plans to build a choultry where poor people from all over the district can organise functions.
At first, Mallikarjunaiah faced opposition from his wife Renukamma. But later, she was convinced that the social work that her husband was involved in was no less than a religious programme.
For the last five years, Mallikarjunaiah has been giving all of his pension money to his wife, and their household is in a better financial state than before.