rmprabodhini.org

About Us

Chat

Message Board

Guestbook

Home

BABA CHANGING THE LIVES OF OSTRACISED LEPERS

People seldom set foot in sunderpur on the banks of the Saiswa river in north Bihar for fear of contact with its "teeming" lepers. Then one man broke the unwritten rule. He came searching for the ostracised community all the way from Titagarh in West Bengal. In a little over a decade and half, he has wrought a small miracle there.

Where once the lepers from the infamous Beggars Colony subsisted on the alms they got from grudging people at the railway station or the market, today they hold their heads high. The 147 families in the colony have good houses, pucca roads, power and safe drinking water. The village in East Champaran district also has a 110-bed hospital, a school for 300 children, a dairy, a biogas plant and a few acreas of fertile farmland. And for every grain that grows here, they have Baba to thank.

Baba, or "Brother" Christdas, is truly a miracle man. Not just for the teners of Sunderpur but also for those in the 20-odd such colonies he has established in neighbouring West Champaran and Sitamarhi districts. "Baba gave me a new life when death seemed the only option before me," admits Ravinder Singh, headmaster of the school in Sunderpur. Singh used to teach at Rampur High School in Vaishali district until forced to quit after contracting leprosy. Singh who is a member of Baba's Little Flower Leprosy Welfare Association is almost fully cured now. Like many of his friends.

When he first visited Sunderpur in November 1981, Christdas was director of the Titagarh Leprosy Hospital. With rich experience behind him - he was also associated with the Missionaries of Charity since the age of 13 - he decided it was time to devote all his energies to the uplift of lepers.

"It was not easy," he recalls, a proud smile lighting up his face. "With no funds to fall upon. I had to borrow Rs 2,000 from a friend to set up the association." Once it was registered, he began to get in touch with friends and charitable organisations, both at home and abroad. The response was encouraging. A friend in Holland, Peter Dackson, was among the first to respond with a cheque for Rs 1.6 lakh.

It was enough to get started. A 47-bed hospital essentially a bamboo and has structure, was ready within a year. An out-patients department took care of those in the early stages of infection while more serious cases were admitted to the hospital. Soon, the number of patients coming to Sunderpur began to increase. The hospital, now housed in a majestic, modern building, has successfully treated 36,500 patients - medicines and treatment entirely free of cost.

Many good samaritans would perhaps have stopped at this point. But for Christdas curing the lepers was just half the battle won. Their rehabilitation and acceptance in mainstream society was equally important. So the task of setting up a dairy began. While that in itself was not such a problem, getting people to buy milk from lepers was a tough job. But over time, the people learnt to throw prejudices aside and the dairy now does brisk business.

A school for the children of the patients was started under a tree. The first teacher was a patient called Vishwanath Jha who had been sacked by the Railways. Today the village has a secondary school, with 12 teachers and 300 students, besides hostel facilities.

Baba also trained the villagers to weav and organised their enterprise under the District Khadi and Village Industry Board. Muzaffarpur, However, since the Khadi Commission does not other competitive prices for the products, the lepers often sell them to private companies.

This is one of the bitter experiences that Baba has had with the state Government. The 450 pucca houses in Sundarpur were built with funds collected by Baba's friends abroad when the Government failed to step in. There are difficulties. As when he had to make more than 25 trips to the district headquarters at Motihari to collect the Rs 2.71 lakh stipend for 137 youngsters he has taken under the Government's scheme to train rural youth for self-employment. But difficulties have never deterred Baba. He sees them simply as challenges to be overcome.

Source: India Today

TREKKERS WHO LOOK BEYOND THE HILLS AND TREES

It was a trek in the rarefied heights of Kumaon 12 years ago that changed Milan Nag's life. The spirit of adventure had been there for years and it had even led the college-going Nag and a few of his friends to open a bank account and use the savings to finance their climbs and treks in the mountains. But that particular journey to Jatuli village, where the roadhead ends and the mountains begin, turned out to be different. The young trekker and his friends found themselves trying to save an eight-month-old baby boy from a ravaging fungal infection using pills and cream from their limited medicine kit. The boy recovered, but the experience was a revelation for Nag and his friends. "We realised that in these far-flung mountain villages, the hill people were badly neglected," says Nag "Medical help is so remote."

For the next four years, between treks and a nine-to-five job as a draughtsman with a leading Calcutta-based consultancy firm and a near-fatal brush with hepatitis, Nag and his friends pondered about combining adventure with social service. Various mountaineering clubs vetoed their idea saying it was unrealistic to combine serious climbing with social welfare activities. But Nag and his friends thought otherwise: they formed the Himalayan Medical Camp, a voluntary organisation of nature lovers and doctors, in '92. That year they kicked off with a trek to Chamoli in the Garhwal Himalayas with a 15-member team of climbers and post-graduate medical students, donated medicines and some equipment. By all accounts, it was a stunning success: some 1,000 patients from 13 villages trooped into their makeshift camps for free treatment.

Seven years on, this fledgling, low-profile group of climber activists has trekked in the clouds of the Himalayas on four occasions, treating some 3,000 villagers and carrying out over a hundred eye operations. All free of cost, of course. For their sterling work, the group has earned the praise of such legendary climbers as Edmund Hillary and Chris Bonnington. "Why only trek and enjoy nature?" asks the soft-spoken Nag. "Let us try to give back something to the people in the process as well."

Indian hill people usually suffer from gastric ulcers, skin diseases and severe eye problems. With the closest health centres usually some 8 to 10 kin away, timely medication is almost an G. BAKSHI impossibility. Sure enough, Nag's trekking group-usually comprising of a dozen or more climbers, doctors and porters lugging around 1,200 kg of equipment and medicines provided by Calcutta's Gujarati Relief Society-is a hit with Himalayan villagers: "We are welcomed profusely wherever we go now." No wonder, considering the relief they are providing to people in these neglected areas. In Leh, where there was not a single eye surgeon for four years until the group arrived there in '92, even the local politicians' children and a government paediatrician's daughter were treated for eye problems at the group's mobile adventure medical camp.

But now their biggest challenge beckons the group. Next March, Nag plans to take a 36-member group, including 12 ace climbers, to the mother of all expeditions: a Mount Everest summit from the south side. A stretched 15-day trek from Lukla in Nepal to the base camp will be used to treat patients, conduct hepatitis tests and run AIDs awareness campaigns. A whopping Rs 2 crore will be needed to fund the expedition. At home, the West Bengal government takes little interest in such activities: the bankrupt state government refuses to cough up even token grants of a few thousand rupees to this apolitical group. But if you want to lend a helping hand and enable Nag's team to climb the Everest and treat thousands of poor hill people, write to him at 22/3 Nakuleswar Tola Lane, Kalighat, Calcutta 26, or call him at (33) 4668752.

Source: Outlook

Send your contribution here: