Thiruvananthapuram: The income from sales of Nila Choru, a fiction in Malayalam that created a sensation in Sharjah book festival, will be given to the children of Attappadi. All the 1,000 copies of the first edition of the book published by Kairali Books were sold out during the five days of the just concluded book festival.
The book is a biography of Ms Uma Preman, a Guruvayoor-based social activist who had been running a shelter for Adivasi children at Attappadi, according to its author Shabu Kilithattil. The royalty of the book would be handed over for various activities.
Apart from students, the shelter also takes care of old persons. The shelter was looking for funds for the construction of a building to house common facilities including rooms for providing tuition to students and also television, Mr Kilithattil said.
Mr Kilithattil who has been in Dubai for 11 years is the news director of a Dubai-based FM radio station. Ms Preman lost her husband to tuberculosis due to lack of diagnosis and treatment. In her loss she found the mission of her life. She set up free medical information-cum-care centre in memory of her husband.
The centre provides information to patients and helps them raise money for treatment. It has already facilitated 500 kidney transplants and 2,000 heart surgeries and mobilised more than Rs 8 crore as aid for poor patients. Uma Preman even donated her kidney to save a patient's life.
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