A JOURNEY OF DUST, DREAMS AND DETERMINATION : FROM KEELANALUMOOLAIKINARU TO MADRAS CHRISTIAN COLLEGE

I was born in Keelanalumoolaikinaru, a small red-sand village near Tiruchendur in Thoothukudi district. It’s the kind of place you won’t find on most maps. A land of palm trees, scorching sun, and people who work harder than anyone I’ve ever seen. 

Both my parents are daily wage labourers. They worked from dawn to dusk under the burning sun, lifting bricks, loading sand, cutting trees. And yet at night, they gave up their share of rice just so their child could sleep with a full stomach and a dream still intact. That kind of love doesn’t need words—it burns itself to keep you warm. Their hands, rough and cracked from years of hard work, have held my dreams like fragile glass—never letting them fall, even when life gave them no reason to believe. There were days when we didn’t know if tomorrow’s meal would come. But every evening, my mother would light the lamp before the small picture of a god, and we’d sit in that dim glow, dreaming quietly about a future we’d never seen.

In Keelanalumoolaikinaru, life moves slower—but the hearts beat stronger. Our village is wrapped in red sand that clings to your feet like a reminder that no matter where you go, this soil will follow. The air smells of earth, firewood, and raw survival. We didn’t have malls or theatres. But we had open skies, stories under stars, and silence that healed you. Our home was small. We didn’t have much, but we had each other.

I studied upto fifth standard in the small government school right inside my village—just a few dusty walls with peeling paint, benches with names scratched on them. Most of us came barefoot. If someone had a pencil box, we all took turns to touch it like it was a treasure. A blackboard, some chalk, and a teacher who made us believe that education could change something—even if nothing around us ever did. Sometimes, we came to school hungry, but we waited eagerly for the noon meal. Back then, I didn’t know what I’d become. But every line I wrote in my notebook was a small rebellion against the life we were told we must settle for.

I still remember the day I first walked through the gates of Madras Christian College. The college looked nothing like the school I came from. Tall buildings. Students speaking fluent English. Laughter echoing from canteens. People with branded clothes, bikes, and confidence. I stood at the corner, silent… invisible.  I was too shy to ask questions. I worried someone might laugh at my accent. Sometimes I sat at the back just so no one would notice how lost I felt.

Madras Christian College wasn’t just a campus. Green trees, students with dreams in every language. Some walked with pride, some with purpose—I walked with fear and silence. I didn’t speak much in the beginning. Not because I didn’t have words—but because I didn’t yet have the courage to share my story. 

I forgot everything. The poverty, pain and everything. Staying here is a escape from reality for me. Everything was new. Here, in this city, I was just a boy in a college. No one knew my past. No one asked and somehow, that was freedom. For the first time in a long time, I breathed without pain.

Chennai gave me moments—soft, beautiful, temporary moments—where I could forget I ever had them.

This evening, I didn’t feel like a boy from a remote village.

I feel like a student. A writer. A soul healing quietly.

And in that silence, I smiled—not because everything was okay…

But because, It was new.