The Kind
Heart
Vasant Kalbag, a 79-year-old retired businessman, encourages
people to be kind. “Doing small selfless acts,” he believes, “not only helps
others –it boosts our health and longevity.”
Kalbag realized this after he came across two
websites-GlobalIdeas-bank.org and ActsofKindness.org-both of which promoted the
message that if only people were kind to one another, the world would be a
better place.
Inspired by this simple but powerful idea, Kalbag started
his own organization-KindnessUnlimited(KU)-and built the KindnessUnlimited.tripod.com
website.
Through it, Kalbag has built a network of KU members who
keep in touch with him via e-mail and phone. And Kalbag e-mails all of them his
bimonthly newsletter recounting the kind deeds of members.
Kalbag also lectures school and college students on the
importance of kindness. Says Swapna Hawaldar, a young software engineer: “Thanks
to Vasant uncle, I no longer think twice about helping strangers.”
“There’s nothing as truly fulfilling as kindness,” says
Kalbag.
***************
When the phone of Mumbai businessman Kishore C. Bhatt rings,
It’s often hospital morgues and police stations calling about unidentified
corpses: For Bhatt, 51, is a one-man funeral service for the forgotten.
In the
last three decades, he has paid for –or taken part in the funerals of more than 1200
unknown people.
Bhatt’s service for the dead began when he went to Surat in
1968 to help after floods had devastated the district. The sight of so many
uncared for corpses haunted him.
He explains: “The holy books say a person’s
soul finds no peace until the last rites are performed.” So Bhatt tries to make
sure that Hindus are cremated and Muslims and Christians buried with
appropriate rituals. “To be of help,” Bhatt says, “gives me great mental
peace.”
***************
The Gift
Giver
While trawling the internet, retired Mumbai journalist Ravi
Chawla clicked onto a website that posted wish-lists of the residents of
old-age homes in Singapore. Chawla, 67, was deeply concerned about the problems
of the elderly, and was planning to give away his 8.3-lakh house in Koravadi,
Karnataka, to the local Rotary Club to be run as an old people’s home.
Many of the wishes of the Singapore senior citizens –sheets,
new clothes, personal bed-pans and artificial jewellery seemed easy to fulfill.
Moreover, Chawla’s daughter lived in Singapore. Within a week, chawla and his
wife Prema, bought the things that the aged residents wanted, packed them into
seven cartons weighing 107 kilos, and flew to Singapore.
There, Chawla distributed his presents to the senior
citizens living at the Sree Narayana Mission Home for the aged sick. “He
brought smiles to all the residents faces,”recalls the mission matron.
“The world has always looked upon India as a poor country
asking for hand-outs,” Chawla says. “Now we’re the givers.”
***************
The Peacock
Doctor
Naranbhai Karangia, a 43 year-old farmer from Jamnagar,
Gujrat, is a devoted guardian of our national bird. If he learns that a peacock
within 200 kilometers of his village is ill or injured, he rushed to the bird
on his motorcycle with vitamin drops, medications and bandages. And if, after
he’s treated it, the bird can’t be left in the wild, Karngia brings it home.
Every year, after the harvest, when food for wild peacock is
scarce, Karangia sets up centers in villages where the birds are looked after
and fed. And during a flood, a few years ago, Karangia spent two days looking
for peacocks marooned on treetops. He saved a dozen.
“I love Peacocks,” says Karangia, “I want to help as many as
I can.”
***************
The Smile
Granter
Annie Thomas, 82, resident of a Pune old-age home was
recently presented with a Casio electronic organ-something she’d wanted for a
long time. Today Annie, a former music teacher, not only plays the organ for
her own pleasure, she provides music at the home’s prayer service.
Annie is among the 500 people whose lives have been
brightened by Anil Bora. A 50 year-old Pune businessman who started the Grant A
Smile Foundation.
I’ve always wanted to help people,” Bora says. In 1998,
after reading an article on the Make-A-Wish Foundation which grants wishes to
terminally ill children, Bora started its Pune chapter. But wanting to help
adults as well, he branched off on his own, and four years ago launched Grant A
Smile.
And in 2003, he opened Rainbow home, where seriously ill patients and
their families can enjoy free holidays together.
***************
The Healer
When her younger son Nawang, an Army lieutenant, was killed
fighting insurgents in Kashmir, Geeta Kapadia went into shock. Three weeks
later, Geeta went to her son’s regimental centre in Varanasi and was touched by
the concern shown by Nawang’s brother officers.
One of Nawang’s colleagues suggested that she go to the Army
hospital in Pune and visit a Captain Y.S. Katiyar who’d lost his left leg.
Geeta, burdened by her own sorrow, reluctantly agreed. Expecting to find a
depressed self-pitying officer, Geeta was surprised at how cheerful Katiyar
was.
Inspired by his attitude, Geeta began helping widows of
recently killed and severely injured officers and soldiers. Says Major Gopal
Mitra, who became blind after a landmine blast: “When I lost my vision, I felt
totally helpless. But Mrs. Geeta Kapadia persuaded me to become self-reliant.
She even helped my wife and me to set up our new home. Few family members do as
much.
***************
Mumbai businessman Rajkumar Sharma always bemoaned the
squalid condition of the lane he lived on. The garbage bins overflowed;
streetlights never worked; the lane was full of potholes.
One day
Sharma learnt of a Mumbai municipality beautification programme called Advanced
Locality Management, which required all the residents of a street or colony to
separate their wet and dry garbage.
While the wet garbage was turned into
compost to grow plants, rag pickers were hired to take away the dry variety. In
return, the municipality gave priority to the street’s problems. Sharma
implemented the programme on his street with 600-odd residents.
Today, his
green and lovely lane is a model project that attracts urban experts from
around the world. Sharma has also helped residents of many other areas in the
city to start similar programmes.
The Life
Saver
Amala Mary, a 48 year-old Tamil Nadu beedi worker, was at
home cooking when she heard a deafening sound. She ran out to find that a part
of the embankment, her hut was built on had collapsed, covering the rail tracks
below with a huge mound of mud and debris. Just then she heard a train’s
whistle.
That meant a passenger train had left the station, two
kilometers away. In a few minutes it would smash into the landslide.
Amala started running on the embankment towards the train.
Then, scrambling down a muddy pathway onto the tracks, she continued to run.
Luckily, she was wearing a red sari. She lifted its pallu and began waving it
as she run. When the engine driver saw amala waving a red cloth, he slowed
down. As the train neared her, Amala shouted,” Land Slide!” The driver applied
the emergency brakes and stopped the train.
“There was a curve ahead,” says driver B. Prabhakar,” so the
landslide wasn’t visible. Had it not been for amala warning, many people would
have died.”
“I am happy I was able to prevent a tragedy,” says amala,
who was given the Kalpana Chawla Award for Courage and Daring Enterprise.
Source Readers Digest 2004-2005
***************
I won’t Let
Him Go!
Smita Bhatt was just a few minutes from home on a night two
months ago when she reached the bridge across the railway tracks dividing the
Mumbai suburb of Ghatkopar. The bridge was packed with people and vehicles
during the day, but at this time, 9.45pm. It was deserted. Smita, a
receptionist at a doctor’s clinic, had just stepped on the bridge’s dimly-lit
footpath when a bloodcurdling Yaaaah! tore
into her ears. A tough hand grabbed the gold chain around her neck and yanked
it off.
When Smita whirled around, she saw a dark, sturdy man with a
thick moustache and reeking off alcohol sitting astride the wall of the bridge.
The man obviously decided to escape by jumping off the bridge but had realized
too late that this would involve a 10-metre fall on to the tracks. He was
trapped-at least for the moment! Determined to ensure that he would not get
away an enraged Smita dropped her umbrella, hand bag and the two large grocery packets
she was carrying, grabbed his ankle and twisted it.
But the thug wasn’t going to give in meekly. Smita watched
him pull out a knife and try to stab her chest. In the nick of time, Smita
swiveled away. Blood spurted as the blade sliced through her upper arm. But
Smita, oblivious to the pain, had only one thought racing through her mind: I
won’t let go. No matter what, I won’t let him go!
In another attempt to get away, the man swung back his left
arm, and Smita felt his fist smash into her left eye. Pain flooded the eye and
her vision blurred. But Smita hung onto his ankle, and began screaming,” Chor !
Chor !”
Some passers-by appeared, but although most just gaped,
three men moved in from the side, and catching the chain snatcher’s collar, dragged
him on his perch and sent him sprawling on the footpath. Only when it was clear
that he was well and truly caught did Smita let go his ankle.
Luckily, smita’s cut
was superficial, and the cops, who arrived soon after, took her to the police
station where after first organizing for some ice to massage her hurt eyes,
recorded her statement, the police later honored her with a certificate of
bravery.
Actually, this was the third time Smita had nabbed a
chain-snatcher nine years earlier, she’d foiled another man who tried to take
her chain. On the other occasion, it was a woman whom she saw being robbed. “I
can’t bear the idea of someone taking away something people have worked so hard
for,” says the diminutive Smita, who stand barely 5 feet tall. “It doesn’t
matter if the thief’s armed. I’ll fight, I won’t give up.”
By Madhavankutty
Pillai (Readers Digest Sept. 2005)
***************
Gordy’s
Rescue
Elena Gordeyeva, a 43 year old resident of Chebarkul ,
Russia, was walking beside the local lake Balyash, it was Oct, 2003, but there
was already a layer of snow on the
ground, and a film of ice covered the lake. A white spot on the lake got her
attention. That is a swan! She realized in amazement after taking a closer
look.
A local fisherman told her that the swan has been there for
10 days now. It had an injured wing, and was unable to take to the skies with
the rest of its flock. Elena decided to save the bird: while the ice was thin,
the swan was safe. Something had to be done- fast.
Returning on Elena began to phone everyone who might be of
help. Under water rescue workers promised to come over. It took a while to
capture the swan, which made frantic effort to escape as soon as people holding
a net came close. Finally, the frightened, injured bird was safely bestowed in
the warm bath-house of one of Elena’s relatives.
Following advice given by Vets, she gave it aloe juice,
mixed with glucose and anti-depressants. She then contacted the local zoo,
which took in the bird and housed it. Later, it turned out to be a mute swan.
The staff named it Gordy (meaning proud in Russian) because of his temperament,
but may be also as a tribute to its rescuer Gordeyeva.
***************
Home again to Afghanistan
Seated in a van bouncing over potholes and bound for the
Afghan border, suraya Sadeed is smiling. “There it is, “She says, pointing. “My
country.”
The landscape is scarred by tank treads made during the
Soviet invasion two decades ago and the civil war that followed. Beyond the
drabness shimmers the green, fertile valley of the Amu Darya, the river that
defines the border of her homeland? It is November 2001, and Sadeed- the
daughter of a former Governor of Kabul and now a naturalized American citizen-
is on her 18th humanitarian mission here. Her goal is to deliver 239
tonnes of food and blankets to some 150000 starving, displaced people on the
drought -stricken plains of northern Afghanistan. This is her first trip back
to her birth country since her adopted country began bombing it.
Though Sadeed supports America’s war on terrorism, this is
her country, and it is being pummeled. As she stands tjhere, the war planes
drop a dozen bombs. Tears run down her cheeks.
For years Sadeed ventured alone through Taliban lines, over
mountains on donkey-backs, bringing in food, cash and medical supplies. The
founder and life force of helped the Afghan children, Sadeed and her bravery
went pretty much un-noticed until the onset of operation Enduring Freedom,
America’s response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Sadeed hadn’t intended to stay so involved with her
homeland. She left at age 24 and stayed
away for 15 years. Then in 1993 her husband had a massive heart attack and
died. In 7 minutes my life changed completely, Sadeed explains. The pain of losing
him was so overwhelming. It was time to return to Afghanistan.” when I got
there” it wasn’t the same country,” Sadeed says.
She was in Pesghawar, Pakistan, where thousands of Afghan refugee’s
ahd recently arrived, when a woman called her name. She was wearing a chadri,
Sadeed recalls, using the Afghan town for Burqa and I couldn’t who she was.
She said she had been in my psychology class in college. I
said,”who are you?” she said, I won’t tell you, but could you please give me 50
rupees? My child has no milk. I gave her the money and she ran off. This woman
was once like me- educated, privileged, Sadeed thought.
When Sadeed returned from her trip, she founded Help the
Afghan Children in a Washington suburb. With just three staffers and a few
volunteers, she started 17 clandestine schools for girls and five clinics. In
1998, Sadeed says, the Taliban over-ran one of her clinics. “They burned it
down-nobody got out alive. “ Still the Taliban didn’t intimidate her. Sadeed
told them,” I was here before you and I will be here after you.
Sadeed walks through Qum Qishlaq, a tent city for some 8000
people. She listens to tales of lose and grief, of the bitter cold-eight has
frozen to death in the last two weeks, they say-and lack of food. Dysentery and
Malaria are rampant.
“Why do I do this?” asks Sadeed. “This is why I do this;
they need to tell their stories. As relief truck arrive, old men, young men,
women and children step up to collect their rations of sugar, cooking oil and
wheat-a bare minimum for a family to survive on for a month.
Sadeed smiles as the procession continues. For 12 days in
seven locations, she bears witness to the distribution of her food. That indeed
is something, she can smile about.
Her next focus: building schools for the children of
Afghanistan. “Taking emergency aid might save kid’s lives from this war,”
Sadeed says. “Giving them education will prevent the next one.”
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