Journeys to democracy

Spinal Beetle with its Nepali eyes arrives in Pakistan

Here’s the latest report of the Southasian journey undertaken recently by my friend, civil rights activist, writer and journalist (editor Himal Southasian) Kanak Mani Dixit, his wife Shanta (a teacher) and son Eelum (an actor, and yes, his name derives from ‘ilm’ which means knowledge, named by his dada, Kanak’s father who is a prominent writer).

Eelum, Kanak and Shanta Dixit: A great drive

The family started their 1100-mile odyssey in Kathmandu, Nepal, ending in Peshawar, Pakistan, to raise funds and awareness about the need for spinal injury rehabilitation. Those who have been following this issue would know that Kanak injured his spine in a trekking accident a decade ago. He survived, making a near miraculous recovery, and started the Spinal Centre Nepal in 2002, inaugurated by the late Sir Edmund Hillary. The coverage they’ve got on this journey has helped publicize their drive tremendously but the required funds have not arrived, and they are well short of their target. This is a personal appeal. Please donate what you can for this important cause. And do read this riveting account of their journey, includes important insights and information…

THE ‘GREAT NEPAL-INDIA-PAKISTAN SPINAL BEETLE DRIVE’

Proud Spinal Centre walas pose by the VW Bug about to make the journey on their behalf / SpinalNepal fb page

DATELINE: PESHAWAR, KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA, PAKISTAN, 17 November 2011: The ‘Great Nepal-India-Pakistan Spinal Beetle Drive’ arrived in Peshawar on 16 November, ending a 1100-mile odyssey that took the 1973 VW Beetle from Kathmandu through Lucknow, Agra, Delhi, Amritsar, Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

“It was an exhilarating journey across the friendly landmass of Southasia, and I hope a pointer towards easy land-crossings for people from all our countries. Most of our journey was along the Grand Trunk Road, built originally by Sher Shah Suri in the 16th century. The 21st century demands that we open this highway for the people, commerce and ideas to flow,” says Dixit.

The journey of the sky-blue Beetle was conducted with three goals: promoting ‘land connectivity’ in Southasia, developing links between spinal injury institutions across the Subcontinent, and raising funds for the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre in Nepal.

Spinal Rally map and car

“The matter of land connectivity is important because airline links can never provide the mass-level contact that our people and economies deserve. One would want to see the same cacophony at the Atari-Wagah border as at the Nepal-India border of Bhairahawa-Sunauli.”

The trip was helpful in developing linkages between organisations such as the Spinal Centre in Nepal, the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre in Delhi (ISIC), the Mayo Hospital in Lahore, the National Institute for Rehabilitation Medicine in Islamabad, the Armed Forces Institute for Rehabilitation Medicine in Rawalpindi, and the Paraplegic Centre in Peshawar.

As for the goal of raising emergency funds for the Spinal Centre-Nepal in order to cope with sudden rise in demand for its services, they raised a little over half of the USD 110,000 goal. “We hope to complete our goal through a retroactive campaign because the spinally injured of Nepal badly need support,” said Dixit.

In the ‘Spinal Beetle’ driven by Dixit, he was accompanied by Shanta Dixit, educator and founding member of the Spinal Centre-Nepal. The back-up car, a Mahindra Bolero, included VW Beetle specialist Naresh Nakarmi, Spinal Centre staff member Suman Khadka and Eelum Dixit, doing videography and photography. Social worker Meera Jyoti is chair of the Spinal Centre-Nepal.

The Nepal President flags off the Beetle / SpinalNepal fb page

H.E. President Ram Baran Yadav of Nepal flagged off the Spinal Beetle drive on 4 November.  In New Delhi, it was received by Maj. H.P.S. Ahluwalia, founder of ISIC, as well as journalist Kuldip Nayar and actor Om Puri. The physicist and peace activist A.H. Nayyar received the Spinal Beetle at the Wagah-Atari border. Throughout the Southasian drive, the team was graciously hosted by members of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) and other organisations, such as the Indian Doctors for Peace and Development in Agra, and Asha for Education in Lucknow.

Among the many interesting aspects of the trip, from the emotional to the historical, Dixit includes the following:

Kanak collecting the earth from Fatehgarh Sahib outside Sialkot, the childhood village of 96-year-old Barkat Singh 'Pahalwan' of Jalandar, India who especially requested this one 'gift''

• The Spinal Beetle team responded to the request of 96-year-old Barkat Singh ‘Pahalwan’ of Jalandhar (Indian Punjab) that some earth be collected from his childhood village of Fatehgarh near Sialkot (Pakistani Punjab). Taking a detour from the GT Road, the team found the place, which had now become an urban suburb of Sialkot, and collected a jarful of agricultural earth for Barkat Singh.

• The memory of Sher Shah Suri, the Afghan sultan from present-day Bihar who ruled from Agra, followed the team through much of the route, which he had regularised in the mid-16th century as an administrative and commercial artery. His memory was revived by the ‘kos’ markers along the Delhi-Chandigarh stretch, a neglected postal station outside Wazirabad, the great roadside banyans providing shade to travellers then and now, and the Rohtas Fort on the approach to Rawalpindi.

• Having started in the Lumbini region of Nepal, where the Sakyamuni Buddha was born more than 2500 years ago, the Spinal Beetle ended its journey in the Gandhara region around Peshawar, a vast centre for Buddhist learning, art and architecture where the Sakyamuni was first etched in human form a few centuries later. In the Potohar Plateau near Islamabad, the Spinal Beetle visited the gigantic Buddhist stupa at the village of Manikyal.

Spinal Beetle Drive at District Hospital, Bharatpur

• The Bharatpur government hospital in Chitwan District of Nepal was the first stop of the Spinal Beetle out of Kathmandu. The Bharatpur hospital sought help for setting up a spinal injury rehabilitation unit, which is in line with the Spinal Centre’s belief in decentralising rehabilitation. As a gesture of goodwill for the Nepal-India-Pakistan drive, the hospital committee donated NRs 50,000, which was gratefully received

• Arriving in Agra, the Spinal Beetle visited the Taj Mahal on the day of Eid ul-Azha. It arrived in Amritsar and visited Harminder Saheb (the Golden Temple) on the Guru Nanak’s birthday. Passing Gorkha District of Nepal (named after the Gorakhnath temple situated there), the Spinal Beetle traversed Gorakhpur, the base of the Nath sect, and ended its journey in Peshawar where the team visited the Gorakhnath Temple there, opened only a month ago after 60 years of closure. The Delhi-Amritsar leg of the journey was started with a visit to the dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia.

• After watching the mock-militarist show at the Wagah-Atari border between the Indian and Pakistani goose-stepping men in khaki, that very evening the team attended a play on Bhagat Singh and his fight for independence, put on by the Ajoka Theatre of Lahore.

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Major support: Maj. Ahluwalia and Om Puri with Kanak Dixit in New Delhi

• In New Delhi, Maj. H.P.S. Ahluwalia of ISIC suggested setting up a Southasian network for spinal injury rehabilitation, given the specificity of the need. There was an enthusiastic response to this idea throughout the rest of the trip all the way to the Paraplegic Centre in Peshawar.

• At the Mayo Hospital in Lahore, the Medical Superintendent Dr. Zahid Pervaiz and Head of Rehabilitation Medicine Dr. Waseem Iqbal provided information on spinal injury and trauma response that had been developed in Pakistan. They graciously offered four-year full fellowships for two doctors from the Spinal Centre-Nepal.

• In Islamabad, the Nepal team got specific information on the response to the 2005 earthquake which hit Kashmir and the Hazara division. The team invited Pakistani specialists to Kathmandu to share information on the medical, rescue, social work and humanitarian aspects, so that Nepal would be better able to tackle the mega-tremor that is projected to hit Kathmandu Valley and surrounding areas before long.

• In Islamabad, activist and politician Nafisa Khattak introduced the team to the Melody Theatre, which had served as a staging ground for the sudden rush of victims from the 2005 earthquake. Poignantly, this only cinema hall of the city had been set to torch by a radical mob some years earlier.

• In Agra, members of the Indian Doctors for Peace and Development reminded the team that while there were 8-9 neurosurgeons in the city, there was no rehabilitation centre.

• The Volkswagen Club of Pakistan (VCP) took the Spinal Beetle under its wings in Islamabad and made sure that the car was made ship-shape after the climb up from the Punjab plains. Discussion was started with the club members about organising a VW Beetle rally from Islamabad all the way to Dhaka through India and via Kathmandu, as an exemplary means to develop people-to-people contact in the Subcontinent. This would require cooperation between the VCP, the Association of Nepal’s Beetle Users (ANBUG), the Volkswagen Club of Bangladesh and the Volkswagen Beetle community in India.

• At a meeting organised by the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) and the Islamabad Cultural Forum, Dixit spoke on the theme of ‘land connectivity’ in Southasia. “If on an old VW Beetle can do the Kathmandu-to-Peshawar trip with ease, imagine how easy it will be for everyone else.” At this time of geopolitical rapprochement between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, a special push must be made for land connectivity, he added. “Let a hundred thousand networks bloom across Southasia, in the spectrum from spinal injury to VW Beetles and beyond, to bring the people together.”

More on the Spinal Beetle drive: The sudden rise of the number of patients over the last year has forced the Spinal Centre-Nepal to raise its service from 39 beds to 51. We seek to raise USD 110,000 from the 1100 mile journey of the Spinal Beetle, at the ‘rate’ of USD 100 per mile from friends and supporters worldwide. By the time the Spinal Beetle arrived at Peshawar on 16 November, a little over half that amount had been raised. The Spinal Beetle Rally is also an effort to raise awareness of spinal injury prevention, rescue, care and rehabilitation in the Subcontinent. The Spinal Beetle has done the Kathmandu-Dhaka stretch twice, in 2002 and 2005, and touched base at the Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed (CRP) in Bangladesh. The CRP would be a key institution in the networking of spinal injury rehabilitation institutions that is proposed.

PHOTOGRAPHS of the Spinal Beetle’s journey can be viewed and downloaded ‘here or requested from Kanak Mani Dixit or Esha Thapa (below) | Follow them at Twitter: @SpinalNepal | Facebook: SpinalNepal

Kanak Mani Dixit contacts: email: kanakd@himalmag.com, dixitkanak@yahoo.com | Facebook: kanak mani dixit
Nepal Mobile: +977-9851053209 | India Mobile: +91-9560758147 | Pakistan Mobile: +92-3043005089

Kathmandu Contact: Esha Thapa, Director,  Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre, Saanga, Kavre District
Tel: +977 11 660847/48 | Mob: +977-98510 | spinalinju@wlink.com.np | eshthapa@hotmail.com
http://www.sirc.org.np

New Delhi: Dr. H.S. Chabbra, Chief of Spine Service & Medical Director, Indian Spinal Injuries Centre, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi
Ph : +91 11 4225 5225 / Ext 243 / 356 | Cell : + 91 98100 54854 |email: drhschhabra@isiconline.org | http://www.isiconline.org

Lahore: Dr Waseem Iqbal, Head of Department, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Mayo Hospital, Lahore
Office: +92-42-6699-36174 | Mob: +92-333-5600-504

Peshawar: Ilyas M Syed, CEO, Paraplegic Center, Hayatabad, Peshawar | ilyassyed1@yahoo.com | Ph: 92-919217900-2

Filed under: Southasia | Tagged: Agra, Ajoka, Amritsar, Armed Forces Institute for Rehabilitation Medicine Rawalpindi, bhagat singh, buddhist, Delhi, donate, eelum dixit, fundraising, gandhara, golden temple, Gorakhnath temple peshawar, Grand Trunk Road, Guru nanak, hazrat niz, Himal, Himal Southasian, India, Indian Spinal Injuries Centre, ISIC, islamabad, Kanak Dixit, kathmandu, Lahore, lucknow, Mayo Hospital Lahore, National Institute for Rehabilitation Medicine Islamabad, Nepal, Pakistan, Paraplegic Centre Peshawar, peshawar, Rawalpindi, Shanta Dixit, south asia, Southasia, spinal, spinal beetle, Spinal Centre Nepal, spinal injury, spinal rehab, taj mahal, Volkswagen Club of Pakistan, VW Bug |