Call of duty for son of soil

PV Sreenijin, a Cong candidate, is the perfect example of a small-town boy who made it big, writes Ramesh Babu.

Small-town boy makes it big, flies off to the land of greenbacks and never looks back.

HT Image

The smell of home, however, brings some sons back, like PV Sreenijin — the 30-year-old Congress candidate in Asia's most densely populated island of Vypeen, off Kochi.

Fresh from his LLM studies in the UK, Sreenijinhad settled down in Delhi, practicing at the High Court, with wife Sonia, daughter of SC judge Justice KG Balakrishnan, when duty called.

For a political greenhorn, he had no difficulty in elbowing out sitting member Dr MA Kuttappan from the reserved constituency of Narakkal in Vypeen.

The local Dalit community of fishermen, toddy tappers and casual labourers recall his college days as a pro-Congress Kerala Students Union activist. Sreenijin was barely 16, when his father, a local Congress leader, died.

After selling Life Insurance Corporation policies to keep the family hearth burning, he graduated from the Government Law College.

The Rajagiri College of Social Sciences gave him a job with its legal cell.

Sreenijin's main opponent MK Purushothaman, does not have the poor-boy made-it big image.