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As the curtain comes down on another successful event, participants applaud the valuable time spent between students and educators
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Armed with goodwill
Ashraf Thamarasseril is among many who demonstrate selfless acts of kindness to help others.
Meet UAE-based Indian expatriates who are making notable contributions in the name of humanity. V M Sathish has the details.
Muraleedharan Kinattukara
Muraleedharan Kinattukara, the Deputy Consul General of India to the UAE, welcomes this Republic Day as a special occasion. The Indian Foreign Service officer, who looks after commerce, welfare and community affairs at the consulate, is about to complete his assignment in the UAE.
He has been actively involved in multiple sectors in the past 38 years, where his skills were utilised at the Headquarters of the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi as well as in Indian missions in Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, and Switzerland, besides the UAE. As an efficient Indian diplomat, he has handled the political, passport, consular, visa, cultural affairs and community welfare areas in various missions abroad. He also possesses administrative skills and handles the press at the MEA Headquarters.
He has worked in passport offices in Kozhikode and Malappuram in Kerala as a Passport Officer. Before taking up his current assignment in the UAE in August 2013, he played a role as the First Secretary and Head of Chancery in the High Commission of India in Colombo.
Lending a hand to the helpless
Umarani Padmanabhan
What makes her unique?
Umarani Padmanabhan is a rare breed of Indian social worker in the UAE. She has been helping the sick, distressed, undocumented and lonely expatriates who face innumerable problems in a foreign country.
Contributions
A former HR employee of a Canadian Immigration Consultancy, Umarani started helping the helpless - irrespective of their nationality, religion or gender - after she came across many patients in a government hospital, where her husband was admitted for kidney ailments.
Since then she has been visiting jails, assisting the undocumented to arrange outpasses, accompany the dead and sick bodies to their home countries, and render community services with the help of Dubai Police and immigration officials. While social and community service are becoming corporate affairs, she has not kept an account of the people she has helped over the past 26 years.
Friend of the dead
Ashraf Thamarasseril
What makes him unique?
Ashraf Thamarasseril has been extending a helping hand to the dead. This selfless service earned him the prestigious Pravasi Bharathi Divas Award presented by the Indian government.
Contributions
Ashraf started out by helping with the documentation work required to repatriate dead bodies, as he himself had encountered a difficult situation after a close friend passed away. Since then, he has been involved in repatriating dead bodies to more than 30 countries. Keeping track of social work, he has sent over 400 Indian bodies in 2016 alone. Addressing the commercial cargo rates charged by airlines, his appeal through various media channels successfully led to a few airlines offering to transport dead bodies for free. A friend of the dead, Ashraf is a businessman and social worker. He obtains various clearances required from the police, consulates and embassies in the UAE, and arranges air tickets and coffins to repatriate bodies.
Dream come true
Mohammed Rafi
The humble resident is a proud Indian, and dedicates Republic Day to thank his second home country, the UAE for giving him opportunities to grow.
Penning stories with a cause
Shemi
What makes her unique?
Shemi is a Dubai-based budding author who devotes profits from her work in Malayalam to feed orphaned children. An orphan herself, her debut novel Nadavazhiyile Nerukal (Truth in your ways) is partly an autobiographic sketch of her life.
Contributions
Shemi lost her father at the age of eight and mother at 13, and spent most of her childhood in an orphanage in Kerala. The book is a reflection of her life in Malabar and how she found empowerment and solace
in writing. Happily married for over a decade, her maiden book, which she wrote with encouragement from her husband, Faslu, has been well received by the community and is running into several editions now. She has devoted the profits from book sales to feed orphans back home.
Nadavazhiyile Nerukal has bagged a number of literary awards and accolades in the UAE and India. It has also been widely discussed in mainstream and social media as well as in literary festivals and events such as the Sharjah International Book Fair.
Hoping for improved ties
MCA Nazer
Living in the UAE with his family for nearly a decade, the Head of Middle East News of Madhyamam Broadcasting at Media One TV expressed his delight upon news that His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, will attend the Republic Day parade in New Delhi as the Chief Guest.
As a former senior journalist in New Delhi, he had personally witnessed a number of colourful Republic Day parades in the capital, before moving to Bahrain and then the UAE. He looks forward to the Republic Day celebrations, as well as an improvement in government-to-government relationship and people-to-people cultural ties. His wife Dr Shameem practices Ayurveda.
Supporting those in need
Kusum Datta
What makes her unique?
Kusum Datta looks after the welfare of labourers and distressed members of the Indian community, and is actively involved in various informal support groups.
Contributions
A resident of the UAE for over 25 years, Datta has been participating in a number of initiatives to help Indian expatriates suffering from various issues. Besides heading the Indian Ladies Association (ILA), which helped distressed women through counselling and other moral and material support, her associations include the Indian Community Welfare Committee (ICWC), Prerana and the other welfare bodies and support groups associated with the Indian mission.
She was also part of the charitable activities of Kiran Bedi, who adopted few villages in India. Dedicated to the cause of stressed and suffering community members, she visits the sick in hospitals and offers a helping hand to needy people to the best of her abilities.
Striving for medical excellence
Dr Dhanya Mohan
Dr Dhanya Mohan is a Specialist Senior Registrar (Nephrology) who takes care of kidney and diabetic patients at Dubai Hospital. She follows in the footsteps of her grandfather, a doctor in the Alappuzha district of Kerala, who used to treat leprosy patients during epidemics.
From kindergarten to graduation, Dr Dhanya excelled in studies and was featured in a number of local newspapers either for being an outstanding student or winning university medals and prizes.
A former student of internal medicine from the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, she had won the B. Braun award for outstanding performance. She went on to complete her MRCP (UK) and Speciality Certificate in Nephrology.
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