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

Taking care while driving in the 3rd world

Just got this in an email from a loved one and for once I felt here is a forward I can believe and even share with the world:

This is happening now! Sad, especially if you are inclined to 'help' people...

While driving on a rural end of the roadway on Thursday morning, I saw an infant car seat on the side of the road with a blanket draped over it.  For whatever reason, I did not stop, even though I had all kinds of thoughts running through my head.  But when I got to my destination, I called the Police and they were going to check it out. This is what the Police advised even before they went out there to check...."There are several things to be aware of ... gangs and thieves are now plotting different ways to get a person (mostly women) to stop their vehicle and get out of the car. There is a gang initiation reported by the local Police where gangs are placing a car seat by the road...with a fake baby in it...waiting for a woman, of course, to stop and check on the abandoned baby since they are more likely than men. Note that the location of this car seat is usually beside the woods or a grassy (field) area and the victim -- woman -- will be dragged into the woods, beaten and usually left for dead.  If it's a man, they're usually beaten and robbed and maybe left for dead, too.

Do not stop for any reason. Call your local authorities [15 in Pakistan] and report what you saw, but don't even slow down. If you are driving at night and eggs are thrown at your windscreen, do not stop to check the car, do not operate the wiper and do not spray any water because eggs mixed with water become milky and block your vision up to 92.5%, and you are then forced to stop beside the road and become a victim of these criminals. This is a new technique used by gangs, so please inform your friends
and relatives.

These are desperate times and these are unsavory individuals who will take desperate measures to get what they want. Please talk to your loved ones about this new tactic being used. Please be safe. 

This is true that theses are difficult times and unfavorable for better security, especially in a country such as Pakistan where there is civil unrest, political instability, masses of corruption and not to mention Terrorism concerns. We have become so used to living in these conditions that for a local resident things 'could always be worse' - but the fact is that we haven't really known them to be much better.

A good international campaign + improved tourism facilities and a very strong Public Relations team could make an enormous difference to the image that bears the crescent moon and star on green and white.

Question is...when we hit rock bottom, will we notice?