Mumbai: Around 27 years ago, Harakhchand Sawla used to stand on footpath and watch patients queuing up before Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) in Parel, a suburb in Mumbai, western India.
Salwa, who was then in his 30s, saw fear on the faces of patients as well as their relatives. Most patients were poor who had come from distant towns. They had no idea whom to meet, or what to do. They had no money for medicines, not even food.
These sights disturbed him greatly and he would return home heavily depressed. He was determined to something for them. At last he found a way. He rented out his hotel that was doing good business and raised some money for a charitable activity right opposite the hospital, on a pavement next to Kondaji Building. He provided free meals for cancer patients and their relatives.
Many neighbors approved his initiative and pitched in with their contributions. Beginning with fifty, the number of beneficiaries soon rose to three hundred. As the numbers of patients increased, so did the number of helping hands. As years rolled by, the activity continued; undeterred by the change of seasons. The number of beneficiaries soon reached 700.
Sawla did not stop here. He started supplying free medicines for the needy. He started a medicine bank, enlisting voluntary services of three doctors and three pharmacists. A toy banks was opened for kids suffering from cancer.
The ‘Jeevan Jyot’ (light to life) trust he founded now runs more than 60 humanitarian projects.
Sawla’s trust spends up to 800,000 rupees every month towards social work. Besides providing free medicines, the trust reunites family members, bury the destitute patients.
Now, aged 57, Sawla, clad in a white kurta and pyjama, walks around the hospital premises everyday from afternoon until late evening, talking intently to cancer patients that camp outside the hospital.
Patients queue up outside his tiny office in the shanty town with plates and glasses. The trust serves them hot rice, chapatti and vegetables around 12:30 pm for lunch and 6.30 pm for dinner. “In the vicinity of TMH alone, the number of patients that come to us for meals has risen to 400,” Salwa says.
The trust provides turmeric-infused milk to those who have undergone rigorous chemotherapy sessions or have throat cancer and can’t digest salty food.
Salwa’s trust spends at least 12,000 rupees to feed the patients.
The trust now has some 150 volunteers. Salwa says the volunteers are so dedicated that they accompany destitute patients, who have completed treatment but no one to help, to go home in remote villages across India and reunite them with their families.
Fond of children, he says it pains him to see little ones affected by the dreaded disease. He recently took around 400 children for a day’s outing. “We have regular activities for children to keep them occupied and distance them from the pain that cancer can inflict. We convince people to collect and submit old medicines, toys, clothes and books for the kids. I appeal to more people to come forward and help us in our endeavor of making the lives of cancer patients a tad better,” he adds.
For the past 27 years, millions of cancer patients and their relatives have found ‘God’ in the form of Harakhchand Sawla.