Badaganadu Balaga, Mysore

The 20^th Annual Day Celebration was coupled with the release of the Souvenir brought out to commemorate 20 years' service to the community in general. The function was held on 5^th July in our own premises, the Badaganadu BHAVANA, where the roof of the first floor hall had been completed and the scaffolding removed just in time. The walls, windows and doors were still missing but that did not deter our Members from attending the function in record numbers (about 175!!). Of course, a beautiful shamiana and other stage decorations gave the building a festive look as you can see from the few photos elsewhere. It was naturally followed by a gala lunch in the cellar hall which was appreciated by one and all.

As we have been updating you in our Badaganadu Bhavana building project section, we achieved the first major success in that the cellar/basement of our building was completed (nearly 75%) and we could hold our 19^th Annual General Body Meeting there and feed the 120-odd Members who participated with a traditional Plantain-leaf, Obbattu lunch! Work on the Ground Floor has now been taken up and we are hopeful of its completion by March 2009.

As you can see from the accompanying photos, the roof of the cellar portion has been cast and after a 3week-long period of curing, facilitated by intermittent rains, the centering has also been removed. Next thing is to build the walls for the cellar and we have a "roof on our heads"! Whether or not we will be able to build the main hall above the cellar, we are determined to have the next Annual General Body Meeting in our own premises - tentatively, on the 9^th November 2008!

The Bhavana Building work has made some progress as you can see from the attached photos.

Our 19^th Annual Day function was held on the 9^th Feb. 2008 at the Rotary West Auditorium. Sri H.N.Ramathirtha, an Industrialist and Vice-Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Mysore was the Chief Guest. We made use of the occasion to recognize the contributions made to the educational field by Prof. K.V.Arkanath, Hon. Secretary of the famous Vidya Vardhaka Institutions of Mysore, by honouring him. Both the guests, in their respective speeches, spoke of the usefulness of small organizations like our Balaga in maintaining the heritage, social and cultural identity of human groups and encouraged us to continue our efforts.

The one-day workshop attracted about 5 participants who were taught the basics of e-mailing and browsing the Internet.