Heart-to-heart care

Published on:

19 Jul 2013, 12:00 am

They are engineers, manage balance sheets and deal with financial issues, but these women assumed the role of counsellors to help Uttarakhand victims come out of their trauma. They gave them meditation sessions too. The group talks to Divya Kaushik about their 12-day visit

At a time when trucks loaded with food material, clothes and medicines were reaching the victims in Uttarakhand, these young women landed there almost empty handed, but their pockets were full of hope, affection and love. Their first task was to get the families, mostly women, out of the confines and darkness of rooms, where they locked themselves after losing members of their families. Garima Sharma, a corporate marketing professional from Mumbai, who was a part of the group, says that as per their research most of the families lost the bread earners and the surviving members do not want material, but someone to talk to and share their pain with. “like most people and organisations we did carry relief material and medicines with us, but when we reached the villages, we realised the ground reality was something different. Some families refused the relief material and they didn’t even come out of their homes. Reaching out to them was the most difficult task. They didn’t need sympathy but a shoulder to cry on. Some women who lost their husbands and children, we got to know, were suffering from depression and didn’t even cry after their loss. So the first challenge was to somehow make them speak to us,” shares Garima, who was a part of Art of living two years ago and has been always open to contribute to the social causes. She just had two days to prepare herself to leave for Uttarakhand and didn’t know how to ask for leave from work. “I told the office people that I have health issues to address urgently. I am originally from Jaipur and said in office I am leaving for my home town,” she informs.

The group had around four women from Mumbai, all from different fields. One of them, Neetika Inamdar, shares that once the women opened to them the next step was to convince them to somehow come and be a part of the group and look forward to life ahead. “Some were so depressed that they said things like they too want to die. Some who saw their children drowning had lost faith in the lord. After our convincing them to speak there were some women who only cried for a few hours and we did nothing but sit besides them. After a few days we got the families together and spoke to them as friends. Meditation was one way to get them out of the trauma. So we taught them basic meditation and also took sessions, which were more like counselling a person,” says Neetika and reminds us that none of them had faced such a situation before and were not prepared to give these kinds of lectures. “We went with the idea of providing basic amenities but the survivors need to come out of their trauma first to make use of those basic amenities,” adds Neetika.

They had to trek long distances and walk for over 14 kms a day to cover over nine to ten villages in 12 days. They too faced rains and landslides and sometimes they themselves were rescued by the army people in the region but nothing could deter them. “Sometimes we had to stay in the villages only since it was still raining. We didn’t expect an accommodation but after a few days and after talking to those families, the members were humble enough to offer us space and provide us tea or whatever they had. It was touching to see that even after suffering so much they want to give their best to the guests,” says Gayatri Dhume. These women are happy that they could make a few families come out of depression. They told us that many have made meditation now a part of their schedule and are now helping other families.

“We stressed that we have to think of the future. People in the region have to be each other’s support system. After talking to some families we got to know that there are members who have basic computer education or have done vocational courses. We are planning to return to the place and train women in some craft so that they can keep themselves busy and might find the means to earn their livelihood,” concludes Dhume.