Madras miscellany

Helping hands across the seas

WHEN ELIZABETH Herridge, the wife of the British Deputy High Commissioner in Madras, decided, as had been her wont at other postings, to get involved in local community service, she became part of the Overseas Women's Club team that offered instruction in English to disabled children at the Andhra Mahila Sabha Hospital. Little did she realise at the time that her experiences there would lead to her being catalytical in a much larger hands- across-the-seas project.

When Elizabeth found that one little boy took almost as long as the class to just reach it, she became conscious of the crying need for wheelchairs felt by many special children and their parents in Chennai. Determined to do something about it, she looked around for help during a furlough in the U.K. - and found the Inside Outside Trust.

The British NGO works with prison inmates and encourages them to provide services to people in need. In this case, the Trust put her on to Dave Kellett, Chief Instruction Officer, Garth Prison, Leyland, and they worked out a way to get a hundred wheelchairs for special children in Chennai. The Trust found wheelchairs that required refurbishing, prisoners at Garth made them as good as new, in many cases altering them for special needs following the detailed notes given by Elizabeth, and the funds needed for packing and transporting them in the U.K. were raised by her at a school old girls' reunion she organised. British Airways Cargo then flew the consignment out to Chennai free earlier this year and has promised to do so early next year as well, when support for the project comes from the Standard Chartered Bank, Madras.

The Kelletts flew out to Madras to participate in the distribution of the wheelchairs, carry out fine-tuning and take back a video that was shown to the prisoners at Garth, which has encouraged them to continue with the project.

The wheelchairs were distributed to 11 organisations in South India, including the Andhra Mahila Sabha Hospital, the Spastics Societies of India, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, Cheshire Homes, RASA, Pathway Orphange and the Asha Project of St. Andrew's Kirk. Seeing the impact the wheelchairs have had on the lives of these special children, Elizabeth Herridge says, "It is almost impossible to describe the joy on the face of a parent who has, until now, been carrying a disabled child, sometimes three miles each way, to a centre for treatment every day."

Back in the U.K., one of the prisoners at Garth was moved to write after seeing the video how committed it had made him to work on projects that helped those in far greater need than his. It is such commitment that has made Garth Prison's Community Workshop one of the favourites for this year's R. A. Butler Award, for which it has been nominated. The annual award is presented to British prisons/ prisoners for outstanding community service.

From director to chairperson

TALL, SLIM, bespectacled Aloka Guha is a person always on the move. And what she got moving when she arrived in Madras around a dozen years ago, was the Spastics Society of Tamil Nadu (SPASTN) whose dedicated founders wanted someone dynamic like her to put in the full-time effort the Society needed and which they could not give.

The Society's activities had made a beginning in the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar home in Alwarpet, then moved to Ayanavaram. When Aloka Guha arrived on the scene, SPASTN was getting ready to move to a splendid facility in Taramani, where the land had been a Government gift from MGR. It was there that the Society's friends and well-wishers recently gathered to felicitate its director and her team for winning the UNESCAP HRD Award for 2000. There are 61 countries in the Asia-Pacific regions that could be considered for the award and a country like India offered 40 nominations. Being picked the best in this company speaks more than words for the success the Management Committee, their director Aloka Guha, and her team have made of SPASTN.

Explaining why the ESCAP award was for the first time ever given to an organisation caring for the disabled, Aloka Guha, speaking at the felicitation function, chose to cite four of the several reasons given at the presentation. Spastics Tamil Nadu had the widest spread, working in 21 Tamil Nadu districts, providing rehabilitation services through its link with Primary Health Centres, offering service through a mobile therapy van in rural and suburban areas, and giving a wide range of training to both staff and children at Taramani, Ayanavaram and Royapuram. A second reason was the continuous change in approach SPASTN has been making in its 18 years of existence. The third reason was that SPASTN was clear about what it wanted to do with the US $30,000 award offered; it had earmarked the money not for the institution but for training the disabled. And that its documentation was thought to be the best among the 129 institutions considered, was the fourth reason cited.

It was with the move to Taramani, and the much more focussed approach of the Committee to where SPASTN was headed, that Aloka Guha joined the organisation in 1991. She'd qualified in special education in the University of Manitoba, Canada, worked in the slums of Bombay when her husband was posted in that city, and arrived with him in Madras around this time when he joined the TVS Group. Taking over as SPASTN's first full-time director, she changed the organisation's outlook from being a local charity to a professionally run education and training centre that focussed on the development of the special child anywhere in Tamil Nadu.

What this young Bengali woman has established may have won an Asia-Pacific award, but more significantly it has earned her the national recognition that was also reason for the felicitation. She has been named the Chairperson of the National Trust for the welfare of persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities, "the four worst handicaps". The appointment is also recognition of the major inputs she contributed to the Charter and Act framed to make life better for the disabled and to give them an equal place in society. The appointment means that she'll be shuttling between Madras and Delhi, "but my children in Taramani and the other centres will still see a lot of me", Aloka Guha promised as she got ready to lay down office as director, SPASTN.

Gallantry awards for sailors

I MIGHT be a bit late in the day with this story, but it was just the other day at Madras-based Sanmar Engineering's Silver Jubilee celebrations that I caught up with the news that two members of the crew of M.V. Sanmar Pageant had been presented gallantry awards at the National Maritime Day celebrations on April 5. The annual celebrations on this day mark the day in 1919 when the first Indian ship in modern times, the M.V. Liberty, left on a voyage to an overseas destination, Bombay to London.

The Government of India awards, presented to the master of the M. V. Sanmar Pageant, Capt. N. S. Bharat, and his bosun, P. M. Shanmugam, were for the part they played in rescuing two Belgians aboard the yacht P. M. Charles that was floundering in Atlantic waters off Nova Scotia on July 17, 2000.

Recalling the rescue effort, after they had been informed about the stricken vessel by the U.S. Coast Guard's Rescue Coordination Centre, Norfolk, Capt. Bharat narrated, "With efforts to contact the Charles not fruitful, it took us over an hour to locate the yacht with the help of a French sailing vessel, Spot, which was in the vicinity. When we reached the yacht, rough weather conditions made it difficult to manoeuvre the Sanmar Pageant close to the Charles, which kept drifting away. Eventually we were able to get within 100 metres of the Charles.

"Now there were difficulties in passing a line to the distressed vessel. Our French-speaking Second Officer once again coordinated with Spot and asked her to manoeuvre close to the Sanmar Pageant. Our bosun quickly seized the opportunity and threw a line accurately on the deck of Spot which was carried promptly to the distressed vessel. A giant line attached to the first line was heaved and fastened to the broken sail mast by the skipper of the Charles.

"The Charles was in a precarious position, heavily trimmed with water that had leaked in, so heaving it in had to be done with extreme caution to prevent it from capsizing during the process. With deft handling, the Charles was eventually brought alongside and the exhausted survivors taken aboard our vessel safely."

Arriving at Pier Kilo, Brooklyn, New York, the Sanmar Pageant was greeted with congratulations by representatives of the Coast Guard and presented to the awaiting media.

The rescue didn't capture as much interest here - or did I miss it? - but the awards at the annual celebrations brought the feat the recognition it deserved.

S. MUTHIAH

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