A gathering of 50 Children was hardly a crowd at the Ayyappa temple in R.K. Puram, Delhi. It was Vishu, the Malayali New Year's Day, and thousands of them, expatriates in the kingdom of nostalgia, had thronged the temple from dawn. They came-and went-offering prayers and receiving the token one-rupee coin from the priest. This small crowd of youngsters, however, was different. They were under-privileged students, children of daily labourers and housemaids, struggling in their private worlds of poverty. All of them were not Malayalis-they had not even heard of the deity called Ayyappa or his shrine on a hillock in the south of Kerala. Seventeen of them were fully or partially blind. They came from two institutions for the visually challenged, the National Association for the Blind (nab) near the temple and the Janta Adarsh Andh Vidyalaya in Sadiq Nagar. Others came from the DTEA Senior Secondary School in R.K. Puram and four schools belonging to the Malayali community.

GOD'S GIFT: NAB student Shilpi Kumari Gupta receives her award from Namboodiri

The moment for which the children had been waiting for came when the priest's kitty of one-rupee coins was finally empty. It was time for them to receive scholarships, each worth Rs 2,500. When the awards were first instituted by the temple's society, the Ayyappa Seva Samiti, sponsors for only four scholarships stepped forward. Soon, however, devotees translated faith into scholarships-finding meaning in service. This year, 28 people from Kerala, Mumbai and Delhi opened their purses to bring some light to the world of 50 deprived students. Says one of them: "I felt that was the best way to honour the memory of my mother."

It all started in the summer of 1999 at one of the routine Ayyappa Seva Samiti meetings. It should have been just a calculation of the year's credits and debits. But, along with the usual items on the agenda-the annual festival, ceremonies and rituals-there was a suggestion that a corpus should be created to help needy students, the funds going to them on a merit-cum-means basis. There were loud protestations from some-should we serve God or man? Should a temple be for purely religious purposes or social service? Amid the conflicting voices, the temple's tantri (chief priest) Puthumana Sreedharan Namboodiri said: "Unless the body is healthy, the spirit will suffer too." That put the doubts to rest. It was then decided that the scholarships would not be religion-specific. Need was the only creed. Says Namboodiri: "We are all humans. One thing I was sure of was that the scholarships should be given without considering whether one was Hindu or not." So when Merlin Sara Jacob, a Class VIII student of Kerala School, Vikaspuri, and Mohammed Rashid, a Class VIII student of Janta Adarsh Andh Vidyalaya, crossed the temple's threshold, puritans, used to temple boards barring the entry of non-Hindus, did not squirm angrily. As prejudices took a day off, what remained was pride and gratitude. All that Swayambar Singh, 11, a visually challenged nab student studying at Kendriya Vidyalaya, could think of as he held the certificate was "how good these men are".

"To ensure impartiality, we ask the school principals to decide on the deserving candidates," says K.V. Nair, secretary, Ayyappa Seva Samiti. All that the society stipulates is that the student should have scored at least 50 per cent marks in their annual examination and should come from a family that could not support his education. "There are children who score 60 per cent but cannot pay the monthly fee of Rs 60. We select them," says K.D. Antony, principal, Kerala School, Canning Road. It is for the first time in his 12 years as principal that a temple has come forward to help students. "It is not a religious affair, it is humanist," says K.K. Venugopal, advocate and an ardent devotee.

The Samiti now plans to go beyond funding education-they intend to open a free dispensary. "We have a lot to learn from Christian missionaries who take care of both the physical and spiritual needs of the followers," says Namboodiri. The sentiment is shared by Ashwini K. Agarwal, director, nab. "One temple has shown that it can sponsor 50 students. If 10 temples come forward, it means all 500 students in nab can be taken care of. And you do not have to go far, you can easily find 10 temples in R.K. Puram itself."

Even as Swayambar awaits the next visit from his father, a farmer in Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh, to tell him about the prize he has won and how he is working hard to get another, he also waits for the next Vishu and his next tryst with man's boundless grace.