Rousing, online celebration of 106th anniv of Queen Mary’s College. Faculty, alumnae and students participate

How does one celebrate a college’s birth anniversary? Online is obviously the answer in these times.
And that is what enterprising faculty, students and alumnae of Queen Mary’s College, Mylapore did on July 14. Celebrated the 106th anniversary of this college.
Said stand-in principal Dr. Varalakshmi Anand Kumar, “This event could certainly be called a landmark in the history of the college as present and past students and staff crossed boundaries of time and space to get together for a glorious 3 hours where poetry, prose and song all welded together to praise the institution.”
That evening, teachers, staff and members of Old Students Association (SOSA) of the college came online to interact, chat and laugh, going often down memory lane.

The function started with a prayer and college song by a team of the Music department followed by a welcome address by Dr Eswari Ramesh, secretary of the SOSA.
Dr Varalakshmi Anand Kumar in her presidential address said that the relevance of a birthday during these troubled times was all the more relevant as it brought out the values of courage and a capacity  to ride over challenges, values imbibed in college.
Some 250 people are said to have checked out this online meet-up.  Among them senior alumnae Dr. Nirmala Thyagarajan, former Principal and president  of the Association, Dr.Shantha Sheela Nair retired bureaucrat,  Dr. Uttara Pabhu and Dr. Eugenie Pinto,  former  principals of QMC.
In addition to the online programme,  there were interesting competitions held earlier including a quiz on QMC. In this, was a video on the college contest.
The technical co-ordination of the ‘live’ event was steered by Dr. Karpagam Sundaramurthy, Head of the Department of Botany.
Kalpana of Dept. of Geography and treasurer of the association offered thanks and byes to wind up the ‘live’ event which ran for almost three hours non-stop.
– This report is based on inputs from Varalakshmi Anand Kumar and Vasantha Madhu and others
– File photo of main facade of college