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They come as destitutes to
Pingalwara. Healed, they return home
WSN Network
 AMRITSAR: At
Pingalwara, a charity home for the destitute, its not a re-run of
lives as inmates leave home to make way for new ones. It’s a
renewal. This is where the needy inmates struck down by disease,
ailments or sheer despondence heal and sprout hope of a new life.
Nine such
inmates will leave for their homes in the days to come. The Trust
started the rehabilitation process for them - they come from diverse
parts of the country - on Saturday.
His family had
abandoned Chandan Balakh – a hip joint and jaw broken - at Amritsar
railway station as they did not have the means to get him medical
aid when All India Pingalwara Trust took him in.
His disabling
condition did not even allow for Chandan to speak at the time.
“I want to see
my parents. It’s been over a year now since I met them. I can speak
now and I want to go back,” he says. The family are natives of
Bihar
and live at
Amritsar.
Chief
Administrator Darshan Singh Bawa said, “When they come here, the
inmates remember little or nothing at all owing to their mental
state.
Gradually, they
recover and start can recall their village, neighbourhood”. But,
Bawa says it happens through a process of mutual trust and bonding.
Trust president
Dr Inderjit Kaur explained, “If the patient is from
Punjab,
his family turns up.
Otherwise, our
men escort them to their villages and return with a note from the
panchayat or police about the inmate’s safe return home.” There are
instances where families refuse to take them in, but these are few
and far between. “Maybe five in a hundred cases,” she said. In
several cases, the patients’ relatives leave them at Pingalwara.
 Sanjay Kumar Pal
from Bihar is one such case. His brother had left him at Pingalwara
three months ago. He’s now eager to return. “I worked as a security
guard in
Delhi for
ten years. I was a farmer earlier. It was in
Delhi that
something happened to me and I went into depression,’’ says Pal.
But, Subina
(name changed) would rather stay back. Subina,who decided to divorce
her husband when she tested positive for HIV as she conceived, for
fear that she may infect him, came to the Trust in 2007. She was in
severe depression.
Her parents in
Andhra Pradesh did not take her in.
“They are old
and the relatives did not help,” she says in their defence. Two
years on, she says she wants to know about her daughter, but would
rather not return. The list of destitute Pingalwara has helped
rehabilitate to date runs long.
In 2005, the
Trust took in 423 inmates, 140 were rehabilitated. In 2006, 200 of
the 365 were sent home after they recovered. As many as 436 inmates
were registered in 2007, 197 got treated and rehabilitated.
In 2008, the
home took in 428, of which 186 were fully recovered and returned to
their homes. Pingalwara took in 209 inmates by July 2009. Of these,
102 have already been sent home.
Home of Hope
(HOH), a non-profit based in the
US,
has partnered the turnaround of many a mute lives at the All India
Pingalwara Charitable Society.
The association
dates to 2006. These were children from underprivileged families,
abandoned by their parents and taken by the Trust in its care.
The Bhagat Puran
Singh School for Deaf and Dumb, which the Trust runs, deserves
credit for much of the work.
Unfortunately,
neither the great Bhagat Puran Singh, nor his institution
Pingalwara, has received the kind of attention they deserved in
India, and one wonders if it is because the Bhagat was a Sikh.
9
September 2009
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