Rajaram Sridhar,
Wheelchair-bound social worker, astrologer and founder-trustee of Maithri Educational and Charitable Trust, Chennai, India
I hold the words of Theodore Roosevelt close to my heart: "Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared to believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance."
One of the children we sponsor, Bhanumathy, who is 19, passed Class XII in 2003 and today has a respectable job in a private firm. For her mother, this is a dream come true.
When Bhanumathy?s father deserted the family, she was only 10. She was a rag collector in our neighbourhood in Chennai. Her mother did odd jobs for a living. Sending Bhanumathy to school was an impossible dream.
It was then someone told her to approach Maithri, the educational and charitable trust I founded. We saw the spark and the determination in her eyes. We took her under our umbrella and today she has done us proud.
Bhanumathy was one of the first children who completed her schooling under our sponsorship. Many other students Maithri has helped are also doing well. Some of them are professionally qualified and are working in the Gulf. Otherwise, they may have ended up as child labourers or got involved in antisocial activities.
I like it at the end of the academic year when these children come to show me their progress cards. This eases my own disappointment of missing out on an education.
When I was 18 months of age I had a polio attack, which left my left hand and both my legs paralysed.
My parents [P. Rajaram and Rukmani Rajaram] tried every remedy to cure me. Visiting shrines and undertaking pilgrimages was a common thing for my mother. She always hoped that some day I would be able to walk.
I went to school until I was 8 years old.
My father would often carry me there [from our home]. Sometimes the classes were held on the top floor, but there was no one to carry me up. I missed several classes and in those days, there was less awareness about the needs of the [physically challenged].
Schools lacked facilities for the [physically challenged]. And I was forced to quit school.
Instead, I learnt from the radio in our drawing room. I listened to programmes on the BBC and Deutsche Welle [from Germany]. This was my window to the outside world. Through this, I learnt to speak good English.
I also learnt a little Spanish, German and Hindi. And I enjoyed reading the Reader?s Digest.
I think the pain and frustration I felt because of my condition, being unable to attend school, gradually subsided.
It was quite tough, but I learnt to accept my fate.
The first time I travelled by train to Mumbai was when I was 34.
My [elder] sister, Meenakshi, who was living in Mumbai, came down for
a holiday. She was determined to take me home with her. My brother-in law, C. R. Sundaram, showed me around Mumbai; I did not have a wheelchair then.
I had never ventured out of home much, very little in fact. I was shy.
I couldn?t strike a conversation with people whenever I went for a family function.
Things have changed. Today, as part of my work at Maithri, I conduct seminars where I speak to large groups of people.
Ten years later, our family went to the Himalayas on a pilgrimage to Rishikesh.
By then I had a wheelchair: a gift from my cousins, Janaki Raghupathy and M. S. Subramanian, who live in the United States.
The trip was wonderful. Due to a landslide, our vans could not travel ahead. Parking the vans by the river Ganges, we experienced the surreal beauty of nature. Watching the Ganges flow was an unforgettable experience.
Astrology is something I learnt on my own.
My sister, Meenakshi, says I have intuition, an innate knowledge of astrology. People come to me for astrological predictions and the fees I charge go to Maithri.
Meenakshi says she finds my counselling reassuring. She talks to me every morning before we start work. She helps me with my work at Maithri. My brothers, R. Badrinarayan and R. Shankar, and my sister-in-law, Swarna, also support me.
Formed in 1991, Maithri has supported around 250 students to date.
Whenever I visited the shrine in my neighbourhood, I would come across children loitering around in groups.
One day I asked one of them why he was wasting his time. "No money to buy books, notebooks or pay [for] school fees," he said.
I then started helping these children by buying school books and notebooks for them. Then, with some of my friends also contributing funds, we were able to meet the needs of a few students for an entire year. And Maithri was born.
Today, Maithri conducts free medical camps and provides relief in case of emergencies. Our volunteers have rendered assistance to the people displaced by the earthquake in Uttarkashi and Gujarat, the cyclones in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh and the tsunami in Tamil Nadu.
Maithri has also set up a physiotherapy clinic for the underprivileged and physically challenged.
Lending us support in this project is the State Bank of India, Chennai head office. We also get funds from individual donors and international organisations.
In 2005, [in recognition of my work at Maithri] the Tamil Nadu government gave me an Independence Day award - the Best Social Worker for the Disabled.
Helen Keller and Beethoven inspired me.
Helen Keller once said, "The world is moved along not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker."
And that tiny push is Maithri.
(To contribute to Maithri or contact Sridhar, e-mail: rajaramster@gmail.com)
