When she met Rukmini, Sakuntala and Gita, all three daughters of an Indian doctor Dr. V.N. SHARMA married to Mrs. ELLEN SHARMA, of German origin, Nelly was unaware that this family was going to have a very great influence on her future. Indeed, it was during one of her stays in Madras (Chennai today) that she met everyone.
At that time Madame and Doctor Sharma ran the “Children Garden School”: one of the major educational institutions in the capital of Tamil Nadu. This couple had original ideas on the education of children: first of all, social diversity had to quickly become a fact within the establishment – the caste system was still in force – then we were going to unite the best of Western and Eastern ideas about education, to give every student the opportunity to develop their maximum human potential. Very quickly success came to crown the work of the Sharma family. Even today, the school has 1,100 students, but now it is part of the “ELLEN SHARMA MEMORIAL” foundation, which was created in 1994 after Ellen’s death.
Very quickly, Nelly made friends with the whole family, she was full of admiration for the work they were doing to help the
poorest children in the big city. It was also with her that she became familiar with the extraordinary richness of Indian culture.
One of the three sisters, Gita, was a Bharathanatyam dancer. She very quickly introduced Nelly to this dance, which would quickly fascinate her. The former classical dancer, when she came to India, eagerly exchanged the tutu and slippers of Western dance for the sari and the “bare feet” of Indian dance: the teacher became a student again. Nelly was taking dance lessons at that time Indian in a famous dance conservatory the “kalakshetra” with Guru Ellapa. Later, she will teach it in her school in Caen. Nelly will pass for one of the pioneers of the introduction of Bharathanatyam in Normandy. She also took these opportunities to learn and practice yoga with the most experienced masters of the moment. She ended up introducing this discipline into her school, which thus became a unique institution in her region, in fact, classical and modern dance, Barathanatyam and yoga were taught there.
Seeing Nelly’s interest in the education of underprivileged children, Gita Sharma advised her to visit the “Mercy Home” center in Chennai in August 1968, which was run by French Salesian sisters. It is to this precise moment that the first sponsorship started for Nelly: that of Marie-Paule, the current president of our association, following a presentation and detailed explanations of the functioning of “Mercy Home” by Sister Marguerite Myriam. Later Nelly will adopt her goddaughter. It is not uncommon for sponsorships to end in adoptions: a nice way to put a Happy End to a very beautiful human story.
Another person who played an important role during Marie-Paule’s stay at “Mercy Home” is Mrs. Berryl Rodrigues, mother of Dona, our correspondent in Chennai.
We must point out that Sister Marguerite Myriam still lives in Paris, in a convent of her order, in the nineteenth arrondissement, where she spends a peaceful retirement, dedicated to prayer. Marie-Paule goes to visit her very often.