The ‘Great Nepal-India-Pakistan Spinal Beetle Drive’ arrives in Lahore

Kathmandu-Lucknow-Delhi-Amritsar-Lahore-Rawalpindi-Peshawar

The ‘Spinal Beetle’ making a fund-raising and awareness-raising subcontinental journey

for spinal injury rehabilitation arrived in Lahore this afternoon. The 1973 Model VW

Beetle, driven by journalist and civil rights activist Kanak Mani Dixit from Kathmandu, is

also making the trip “to strike a blow for overland connectivity between the countries of

Southasia,” he says.

The Spinal Beetle was flagged off from Kathmandu by President Ram Baran Yadav, and

in Delhi it was seen off by actor Om Puri and the founder of the Indian Spinal Injuries

Centre, Maj. HPS Ahluwalia. It arrived in Lahore across the Wagah-Atari border in the early

afternoon of 11 November.

The Journey: The 1973 model VW Beetle of the Spinal Injury Rehabilitation Centre (Nepal)

started its journey from Kathmandu Valley on 4 November 2011. Coming down to the

plains, it entered Uttar Pradesh and reached Lucknow on 5th evening. Westward, it took the

National Highway-2 to Agra, getting on to the Grand Trunk Road originally regularised by

Sher Shah Suri in the 16th century.

The ‘Spinal Beetle’ arrived at the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC) on 7 November evening.

Travelling further along the Grand Trunk Road, it stopped off at Chandigarh and Amritsar

before arriving at the Wagah-Atari border. The Spinal Beetle will enter Pakistan via the

Wagah-Atari border and, in Lahore, visit the Mayo Hospital. From Lahore, the car will ride

the Grand Trunk Road as well as the M-1 motorway to Rawalpindi / Islamabad, and end the

journey at the Paraplegic Centre in Hayatabad, Peshawar on 16 November.

Why the Adventure: 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, at the ‘rate’ of USD 100 per mile from friends and

supporters worldwide. At midway, the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre in Delhi is 540 miles

from Kathmandu. The final destination, the Paraplegic Centre in Peshawar, is 1100 miles

away. About USD 35,000 of the USD 110,000 goal had been raised by the time the vehicle

arrived in Lahore.

Awareness: The Spinal Beetle Rally is also an effort to raise awareness of spinal injury

prevention, rescue, care and rehabilitation in the Subcontinent. In this effort, the Spinal

Centre-Nepal is assisted by Indian Spinal Injuries Center-Delhi and the Paraplegic Centre-

Peshawar.

‘Overland connectivity’: Kanak Mani Dixit hopes that the drive of the Spinal Beetle from

Nepal through India and Pakistan will also help promote the goal of ‘overland connectivity’

across Southasian land borders so that there is high-volume people-to-people contact. “The

visa regimes must be softened, and the people at large must feel free to move about,” he

says.

The Trip So Far: After a gracious send-off from Ram Baran Yadav, President of Nepal, the

Spinal Beetle left Kathmandu Valley and arrived at the Bharatpur Hospital. Interactions

were held for the start-up of a spinal injury rehabilitation unit there, with the help of Spinal

Center-Nepal. The Hospital committee contributed Rs 50,000 for the Spinal Beetle’s fund-

raising drive. Having come down past Gorkha District of Nepal, crossing the border we came

to Gorakhpur, where we learnt in Hindustan newspaper that Pakistan had allowed the

opening of the Gorakhnath Temple in Peshawar after 60 year closure.

In Lucknow, the SIPS ‘super speciality hospital’ organised an interaction with patients

and staff, and we met activists who were working on peace related issues, including India-

Pakistan people-to-people solidarity. From Lucknow, we took a spanking new superhighway

to Agra, which is on National Highway -2, and part of the Grand Trunk Road, whose original

incarnation was built by Sher Shah Suri in the 16th century. We will be following this road

all the way to Peshawar. In Agra, we were greeted and hosted by the Physicians for Peace

and Development, which is also affiliated with the Physicians for Social Responsibility. At the

interaction with the doctors there, it emerged that there is no spinal injury rehabilitation

centre in the city even though there were seven or eight neurosurgeons there. Some time

was spent visiting the Taj Mahal, on the very day of Eid, and Agra Fort, the ‘power center’ of

the Mughals.

In Delhi, a grand reception was organised by the Indian Spinal Injuries Center, with which

the Spinal Centre-Nepal has been collaborating since the latter’s inception a decade ago.

Speaking at the function, Major HPS Ahluwalia, founder of ISIC, lauded the three-country

drive for helping spread awareness about spinal injury rehabilitation, and promised the

support of ISIC both for the drive’s fund-raising objective as well as for the Spinal Centre-

Nepal. The Director of ISIC Dr. HS Chabra repeated these sentiments, while journalist and

peace activist Kuldip Nayar (born in Sialkot) lauded the Spinal Beetle participants for helping

to raise awareness about people-to-people contact across Southasian frontiers. At the

flag-off, actor Om Puri bowed in a ‘namaskar’ to the Spinal Beetle and talked about the

importance of “dignity to the disabled”. Sending the Beetle off on its journey to Lahore, Maj

Ahluwalia recalled his childhood in Lahore. He suggested that Dixit work to bring together

a Southasian association for spinal injury rehabilitation. From Delhi, with an over-night

stopover in Chandigarh, the Spinal Beetle arrived in Amritsar, to be hosted by Tejinder Singh

Gogi, the hotelier and significant India-Pakistan ‘link person’. The team found time to visit

the brilliantly lit Harminder Sahib (the Golden Temple) on the very night of Guru Nanak’s

birthday.

The Mayuri Restaurant of Jalandhar: During the drive into Amritsar, the team stopped off

at the road-side Mayuri restaurant at ‘bypass Jalandhar’. Only when the Spinal Beetle was

already in Amritsar did Dixit realise that he had left all the passports and travel documents

at the restaurant. Thankfully, he received a call from the proprietors, the Prajapati family.

Upon return, there was joyous handover of the satchel. The grandfather, 96-year-old Barkat

Singh, was originally from the village of Fatehgad near Sialkot. He asked that a fistful of

earth be brought back for him from Fatehgad.

The Rallyists: Kanak Mani Dixit, Founder-Chair of the Spinal Centre-Nepal, is driving the

Spinal Beetle. He is accompanied by Shanta Dixit, board member of the Spinal Centre-Nepal

and educationist. It was Kanak’s trekking accident a decade ago, resulting in a broken back,

which led to the establishment of the Spinal Centre-Nepal. Dixit has been a journalist since

1971, and has worked to maintain Nepal as an ‘open society’, fighting King Gyanendra’s

autocracy and challenging the Maoist party to stand by the peace process.

Done it Before: The Spinal Beetle has done the Kathmandu-Dhaka stretch twice, in 2002 and

2005, to generous response.

About the Spinal Centre Nepal: Inaugurated by Sir Edmund Hillary on April 2002, the Spinal

Centre-Nepal will be ten years old in 2012. Originally catering to patients from ‘traditional

accidents’ such as fall from trees and cliff-sides, spinal injury victims of ‘modern-day

accidents' related to construction, rock mining and traffic events are increasingly filling our

wards. We offer physiotherapy, occupational therapy, nursing, medical care, counselling

and home rehabilitation. We are also involved in prevention. The Spinal Centre is run by the

non-profit Spinal Injury Sangha – Nepal.

Website: Details of the ‘Great Nepal-India-Pakistan Spinal Beetle Drive’ are to be found at

www.sirc.org.np. The site also gives information on online support and pledges.

Lahore Contacts:

Farjad Nabi, Phone: 322-4491969
Dr Waseem Iqbal
Head of Department
Department of Rehabilitation Medicine
Combined Military Hospital
CMH Lahore Medical College
Lahore Cantt, Pakistan
Office: +92-42-6699-36174
Cell phone: +92-333-5600-504

Peshawar Contact

Ilyas M Syed,
CEO, Paraplegic Center
Hayatabad, Peshawar, Pakistan
Phone: 92-919217900-2

Kathmandu Contact:
Esha Thapa, Director, Spinal Centre-Nepal
Tel: +977 11 660847/48
spinalinju@wlink.com.np
eshthapa@hotmail.com

www.sirc.org.np

Urdu Version of Flight of the Falcon - 'Shaheen ki Parwaaz' (OUT NOW)

Now available in English and Urdu translation

"Flight of the Falcon" | "Shaheen Ki Parwaz"

Did Ayub Khan Chicken out in Battle for Kohima and sacked by Gen. Reese, nom de plume, Pocket Nepolian?


Was AQ Khan ever a nuclear scientist or only a Metallurgist? 


Did you know the story of $10mn donation by AQ Khan from a swiss bank to obtain Chair of Academy of Sciences?


Also find the real story behind the T-33 high-jack by Bengali Flt. Lt. Matih-ur-Rehman in 1971

Read these & More true facts in the Third Edition of 'Flight of the Falcon'

Bestseller by Vanguard

Visit www.sajadhaider.com for more...

Dad's book - flight of the falcon

My dad wrote a book not so long ago entitled the Flight of the Falcon, which has managed to penetrate the borders of Pakistan and gain much popularity in India, USA, UK and even Australia. Thank God for the wonders of online ordering.

This book was a monumental accomplishment because it took him nearly a decade to put the whole story together and have it published (with great strife, I might add). Having just gotten over the hype of the book (and it's highly controversial, yet exciting contents), he has neared an Urdu version, which we expect to hit the bookstores soon.

I am quite excited about the turnout since a large portion of his immediate audience is actually going to be educated by a lot of what he has written, rather than see a different version altogether.

It will be quite interesting to see how it translates into Urdu - I wonder if there are words available in the dictionary to replace what was expressed in English. And if so, how emphatic will they be?

Flight of the Falcon - OUT NOW

"Will someone come forward to challenge Sajad Haider’s Flight of the Falcon?"

Flight of the Falcon

Demolishing myths of the Indo-Pak wars 1965 & 1971

Story of a Fighter Pilot

by S Sajad Haider

My father's much awaited book is out and available at various book stores such as Saeed Book Bank, Vanguard Books. For online orders, please visit Vanguard's online store

For reviews on the book by Anjum Niaz and Shireen Mazari, please visit the following links:

Anjum Niaz: "Don't you ever say die" - Dawn.com

Shireen Mazari: "A fighter pilot's tale" - The News International

Crossing Swords

For those of you who don't already know, my father has just recently completed a long and arduous mission of writing his autobiography. He started this project about 10 years ago and it really picked up the pace the year I graduated from College (2004). He is a decorated retired Air Force Pilot and war hero. His mission has been a challenging, yet rigorous task of finding the accuracy in his account of history and substantiating it by engaging numerous people of his past and present. Through the course of his mission, he uncovered many emotions; some lost and some new. 

My father to me is the greatest hero in my life. His contribution to history as an individual is remarkable. Despite our family setup, he has retained his dignity by doing what he could to ensure all his dependents and loved ones were and are comfortable. 

His book, Flight of the Falcon, will be available in bookstores throughout the major parts of Pakistan shortly. Please watch this space for announcements. In the meantime, take a moment to read an article about him in The News - Online (Pakistan's #1 selling print newspaper). It was written by Anjum Niaz, a recognized freelance journalist.

Crossing swords

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

By Anjum Niaz The writer is a freelance journalist with over twenty years of experience in national and international reporting Secretary of State Condi Rice has categorically pointed to “Pakistani soil” being used in Mumbai attacks. And she expects “Pakistan to act.” This is a blunt order from our benefactors who have doled out 10 billion dollars to keep the terrorists at bay. News has it that Barack Obama has received an intrusive dossier on how our military has spent the money. “The message of the report is that you can’t win in Afghanistan without first fixing Pakistan,” says a senior US official. “But even if you fix Pakistan,” the official thinks, “that won’t be enough.” Some analysts in Washington think that the money has gone into revamping Islamabad’s military capability against the Indians and not in fighting the militants as per our pledge to the Americans. Obama is likely to husband the flow of funds in the future. “The truth is that $10 billion later, they (Pakistan) still don’t have the basic capacity for counterinsurgency operations. What we are telling Obama and his people is that [this] has to be reversed.” Reversed?  Our exemplar of national pride was once our army, the symbol of crossed swords. We saw the shahadat of our jawans; we witnessed hilal and jurat medals pinned on our best and bravest; we heard stories of heroism that made us marvel; and our hearts beat in unison when Nur Jehan sang aay watan key sajeelay jawano, meray naghmey tumhera liya hein. Oftentimes we lived lives encircled in awe with what the future held. The promise of Islamabad becoming a shining city upon a hill never did leave us for long. Hope was always around to hold our hand whenever we were down.  Today our nation’s star has elsewhere its setting. We watch it sinking and can do nothing about it. No longer are we the architects of our destinies. “What’s going to happen?” is on every lip. The TV channels and newspapers daily log stories of affairs gone awry; of men in power run amuck; of suicide bombers’ annihilation of the powerless and the meek; of the dogs of war (US, India & Israel) hunting down our nuclear arsenal and cutting us asunder. It happened in 1971; it can happen again. Raining missiles on us will continue. America has replaced its Predator drones with MQ-9 Reapers just rolled off the assembly line. These unmanned killing machines pick up every word that humans utter down below 50,000 feet. Their infrared rays pick up your body heat and relay the information to the pilots sitting in trailers in Las Vegas. They sit before huge computers directing the planes through remote control. Underground and underwater fiber-optic cables link these trailers to Europe, where a satellite dish makes the connection directly to every Reaper in the air over Pakistan.  “Worry not,” says our Air Force chief bravely. Pakistan has its own drones to counter the Reapers raiding us. The chief is ready to deploy them, but is Zardari willing? “I don’t understand why we don’t use our own drones?” says a Pakistani journalist writing for Arab News. “We can fit them with Griffo (Falcon, in Italian) radars imported from Fiar, Italy.” The buck stops here! Air Commodore (r) Sajjad Haider, the decorated war hero of 1965 and 1971 wars with India has written a whole new book on how the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) was kept out of the loop by the high command during combat. He has named people in the military and air force who were “afraid of their own shadows.” Not only did they let down PAF, but they let down the people of Pakistan. No authentic soul searching was conducted; nor those found guilty of betrayal nailed. “Instead these men capitalized on our successes to award themselves the highest awards in gallantry,” says Sajjad Haider, who led the No 19 squadron that chased away the Indian pilots at Wagah and later bombed Pathankot destroying their planes parked on the airfield.  Around September 1, 1965, a senior civil servant in Ayub’s government receives an unscheduled visit from the then British ambassador in Islamabad. “India is going to attack you,” says the envoy. “Warn your president about it.” Ayub’s aide picks up the ‘secrophone’ after his visitor leaves and relays the urgent message to the presidency. The president is ambivalent. On the night of September 6, Rawalpindi gets its first taste of Indian ire. Their bombers fly overhead and rain bombs. Lahore is next. Foreign Secretary Aziz Ahmad and his Foreign Minister Z A Bhutto have since April planned and executed infiltration into Indian-held Kashmir by 7000 regulars and volunteers, provoking an Indian assault on Pakistan. “There was no empathy or tangible plan to keep our soldiers supplied with food and ammunition. Most were massacred because our ‘Field Marshal’ was no Field Marshal Rommel,” Haider says sarcastically. Nur Khan, who had recently been made the air chief was disgusted with Ayub’s dalliance. He got hold of a C-130 at Chaklala, stocked it with stuff, and took off for Kashmir in the middle of the night. “Nur Khan risked his life” as the plane navigated through a thick cloud cover guided by “dead reckoning” which means rudimentary weather radar, to reach the ‘drop zone’ in the valley below saving the lives of our soldiers.  Bravo Nur Khan! A grand plan for “pre-emptive” strikes on Indian airfields was ready with the PAF. The outgoing air chief Asghar Khan had prepared it. “Had the plan gone through, we would have crippled the IAF (Indian Air Force) in the first hour of September 6th attack,” says Haider, appearing to relive every minute of the dogfights he ever fought. “But the commanders at Mauripur and Sargodha – our two largest airbases – procrastinated.”  Haider, 75, spent his early retirement years “earning money legally” through lucrative defence deals. He insists that no kickbacks were involved. However, he’s earned enough to live a gentrified life, shuttling between the comfortable environs of Islamabad and his villa in the Spanish resort of Marbella writing his memoirs. His book Flight of the Falcon should be in the bookstores very soon. It contains many bombshells. “I want to remove the haze and opaqueness surrounding the truth. Ayub Khan’s Diaries bypass the 1965 war, while Glimpses into the Corridors of Power by his son Gohar Ayub tries to cover up the gaps of his father’s memoirs by mutilating the truth,” says the “enraged” airman.  There’s plenty of hyperventilation by Sajjad Haider in his book. He blames president Ayub Khan, army chief Mohammad Musa, commanding generals Rana and Yayha Khan for failure. “All these men capitulated to their self-created fears. The hand of the winning general Akhtar Malik was stayed and the gun taken away from him and given to Yayha just when Malik had the ‘chicken’s neck’ (Akhnoor) in his grasp and would have infiltrated into the valley of Kashmir. Musa got on the pulpit and hollered ‘Do not provoke the Indians.’” According to Haider, well-known Indian historians corroborate his version of the two wars. They praise his No 19 squadron and the team of pilots that earned six Sitara-e-Jurat. “My book tries to show how independent units, like mine, achieved beyond all expectations.” Air vice marshal Sadruddin, first commander of F-104 Star Fighter Squadron, ratifies this claim when he says: “Sajjad Haider was a flamboyant character with a quick wit, outspoken, irrepressible, daring, articulate and given to exercise initiative beyond his terms of reference. His book gives fresh and candid accounts of some major events of the last 50 years now appearing in a different light devoid of the embellishments of those times. In the long run, truth prevails.” Today, the word accountability has almost a criminal tinge because if ever done properly it will open up many carcasses and expose our leaders masquerading as saviours and heroes of our nation. Our president, says Sajjad Haider, lives in opulence with liveried guards standing post behind him. “What he lacks in substance and depth, he makes up by creating symbols of grandeur and pomp.” I may not agree with few of Sajjad Haider’s fixations, his thicket of words, some of them excessively hubristic, but I agree with Haider that whoever advised President Zardari to back him up with uniformed guards decked up in red and gold extravaganza and holding lances before the TV cameras should be fired! Oops! Is it by any chance the president himself! Email: aniaz@fas.harvard.edu