ABC & ICOD
Breakfast in the hotel provided some variety, but once again murder was on the menu as Dcn Liam was seen off by the Traitors.
Today we visited two other centres supported by the City of Joy Aid, UK – the umbrella fundraising organisation for Udayan. The first stop was the Asha Bhavan Centre (ABC). The ABC is a home to 150 girls with physical and mental disabilities. Many of whom have been abandoned, abused, tortured or trafficked before being taken in by the centre.
The ABC operates as a safe home and school for the residents as well as day-pupils. They also provide outreach programmes and services such as a prosthetic workshop and education centres to tackle the stigma associated with disability and to help families cope with the additional needs of their children.
It reminded us of how fortunate we are to live in a society where much has been done to integrate and enable those with disabilities. The smiles and character of the children helped us to see past the disabilities. The same smiles will be a reminder to us the next time we’re tempted to moan or be ungrateful, complain or quit!
After the ABC we went further out from the city to visit Brother Gaston. Now 86, in a motorised wheelchair, with a list of health complaints as long as the hotel’s menu – yet full of life, joy and enthusiasm for his work. Brother Gaston was a contemporary of Mother Theresa – another European living amongst the poor in the Calcutta slums, trying to alleviate the suffering of the poor. It was his stories of the slum-dwellers that inspired Dominique Lapierre to write the book ‘City of Joy’. In the later film adaptation the Swiss Brother became an American Doctor played by Patrick Swayze.
A two-and-a-half-hour return journey through the evening rush-hour later, we were ready to devour our pizzas and savoured another little taste of home. We returned back to the hotel for a round table, and the successful banishment of another Traitor… but who was it?
Tomorrow we tour the city, and learn a little about the history of Kolkata, the Raj and hopefully find out why they call it The City of Joy.
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