The man in the wheelchair

Among this year’s new year greetings, there was a postcard from Ayikudi in Tamil Nadu. It had a line drawing in green crayon. Two arms and one leg attached to the body of a child. An ordinary postcard which told an epic story of this man in a wheelchair.

He was waiting for me in the reception and came straight to the point. “I have come to raise funds for disabled children in Tenkasi. They need a school and I want your help.”

I was knocked out. “How can I do that ……” I began.

He continued coolly “By listening to my story?” And, what a story! He was travelling all over the country in his wheelchair because he owed children a debt, he said, for having made his own life meaningful. He spoke with quiet conviction. “In 1975, I came to this city to clear the physical endurance test at the Armed Forces Headquarters for a naval officer's post. I leapt across deep trenches and climbed Himalayan walls with total ease. Finally, I had to climb a tree and jump onto a platform 25 feet below. I was sure I could make it and I did. But my body was wrecked and I could not move”.

In the intensive care unit of the Command Military Hospital, Lt Gen Amarjit Singh Chauhan, the orthopedic surgeon, quietly told him that his spinal cord was broken. For Ramakrishnan, his 21 years lay in tatters. He did not know how to pick up the pieces and put them together again. He was paralysed from the neck down, dependent on others for the smallest need.

The one thought which tormented him was how to live a useful life with this handicap. The school in Ayikudi was just an extension of that thought. He returned to his village where he spent long hours teaching street children to read and write in a thatched wayside hut. Ramakrishnan little realized that with these informal classes, he was not just rehabilitating himself. He was laying the foundation for a remarkable institution.

What began as a thatched hut with five pupils became a vibrant residential primary school, with over 600 students. Philanthropic organisations competed with each other to rehabilitate them. According to Ramakrishnan, aid came from Australia, to set up
similar centres in India. The Heart and Hand Foundation in the US came forward with an incredible offer to start a proper home for them.

In 1991, exactly ten years after he started dreaming, Ramakrishnan declared open the Amar Seva Sangam in Ayikudi near the picturesque water falls of Court Allam. SUNDAY HERALD published this story and more donations poured in. All this happened three decades ago. But the postcard I received like other similar ones is a constant reminder that any number of falls do not count in life, as long as you know how to get up.