In service of people

For many people in the last stages of life, most of whom are also abandoned by their family, the small, nondescript building in a bylane of Mehdipatnam's Padmanabhanagar is the last refuge. Here at ‘Prema Nilayam’, an old-age home, run by ‘Kinnera Welfare Society’, many an unfortunate person has found succour and refuge at time in his life when he needs it most.

We found social worker K Naga Chandrika Devi, founder-secretary, ‘Kinnera Welfare Society’, counselling the women sitting or lying on the beds around. One of them was told not to lapse into depression but find a useful way to spend her time. “Walk around, it is good for health too, instead of lying and brooding in bed all day,” Naga Chandrika was telling her.

She was exhorting another to eat her meals on time and yet another to have his medicines. Elsewhere, she had to deal with some very aged inmates who were bedridden and in diapers, but who were tearing up their diapers and throwing the cotton around.

Many come to this home on the brink of death either with serious burns; terminal illnesses like incurable cancers and end stage heart disease. There are also schizophrenics, stroke patients, and kidney-disease patients for whom dialysis has been discontinued.

Kinnera offers special care for bedridden patients. “We have also arranged cremations for those who have no families or whose family does not turn up even at this stage,” reveals Naga Chandrika.

This home has tie-ups with major hospitals and has basic medical equipment and physiotherapy aids, etc. Doctors visit for regular medical check-ups.

Naga Chandrika finds it fulfilling to look after these unfortunates, but it is also exhausting, she admits. The inmates need constant monitoring and counselling, regular meals, clothes, a comfortable bed, daily medicines, medical attention during emergencies and above all, love and affection,” she says.

She is founder-secretary, ‘Kinnera Welfare Society’, and has won a national award for her institution’s services to the destitute, the ‘Vayoshreshtha Samman National Service award’ from the Government of India for 2010-11. The Andhra Pradesh government’s social welfare department and GHMC also gave her awards recognising her services.

Honours and awards from private organisations include---Sevaa Dharmik award from Chaithanya Kala Arts; Naveena Mahila Award from TV9; Mathrudevobhava from Kalanilayam; Hyderabad Seva Puraskaram from Swaartha Bharathi Charitable Trust, etc. The ‘Kinnera Welfare Society’ has a wide range of activities.

There is Prema Nilayam, meant for destitute, aged persons; Jeevan Dhara or Geratric Care Centre; Manodeepam for depression patients; Amma for cerebral-palsy victims and spastics; Ashraya night shelter; and Akshara school for underprivileged children.

These facilities are meant for the poor and socially disadvantaged people. Many inmates pay a modest fee for the facilities while the ophans/destitute receive everything all free of cost. Naga Chandrika and her team also visit government schools in and around Hyderabad where they hold counselliing classes for students, teachers and parents, they also motivate villagers to keep the government schools clean especially the toilets. Her team is also helping in programmess to provide clean drinking water in villages.

Naga Chandrika encountered one blow after another in life. However, instead of giving in to despair or bitterness, her reaction was to understand the plight and empathise with the more unfortunate around her. Hailing from an upper, middle-class family, she was married off when a teenager, to a man much older than her. It turned out he had serious health ailments not disclosed before the marriage.

When he passed away four years later, she was left to fend for herself and a baby daughter. She secured a job on compassionate grounds in APSEB (now AP Transco). Later, she remarried only to be saddened again because of her husband’s neglect and infidelity. She finally walked out on him with her baby son from this marriage.

After this second broken marriage, she steeled herself and went on to serve her aunt cum foster-mother, and then her grandmother in their last days. “This experience left a deep impact on me. I understood how much the aged and in fact, anyone who is alone and lonely suffers physically and emotionally. The helplessness and anguish of a person in old age can be heart-breaking. Having myself suffered deep loneliness and the lack of love, I began to empathise deeply with such unfortunates and resolved to help them.”

She was a single mother and a small-time government employee with little resources. Driven only by her compassion and commitment, she founded a small old-age home and a school for underprivileged children in 2003 raising money by selling off her house and pawning her gold.

Naga Chandrika faced a lot of struggles in the initial stages but says that “Today, I am better equipped as many donors and volunteers are coming forward seeing the good work here.”

By Aruna Chandaraju