Our visit to Ashraya chetana Rehabilitation Home located at Nizampet, Kukatpally.
On inquiring about the Home before the visit, we found out that there were around 21 old-aged inhabitants, over 20 children, and few middle-aged women too. They’ve all had highly harsh experiences with the society. The old-age residents were first ill-treated by their children and then shunned away. The children were runaways who were ill-treated by their parents, who made them work and beat them up brutally. The middle-aged women were alienated by the society and their own families, or left their monstrous abusive husbands. Upon further inquiry, we found out that the Home’s facilities were up to the mark and didn’t require much improvement.
We realized that these people were in need; a need to be loved, a need to be cared for. Materialistic things do not mean much to them. So we went ahead and visited the Home and spent a whole day there. We served the residents lunch and joined them as well. We also played for them some of the most famous and successful Telugu movies of their time, which they adored to the core and hadn’t watched them for a very long time. They saw a son, an elder brother and a grandson in each of us and burst into tears.
Praneeth was talking to an old man about his background when he found out that this person was from a very well off family which discarded him after gaining rights to his property, claiming that it is theirs and that was a burden. We felt his pain, which was unbearable. We chatted with him for more than an hour about our backgrounds. He was very happy after speaking with us and we exchanged telephone numbers, and are in constant touch with one another.
Another incident was that of Praneeth feeling that one of the old ladies looked similar to his grandmother; and he communicated the same to her. She immediately started crying and told us about how she lost her husband and worked really hard to raise her family. They in-turn discarded her and left her to lead a miserable life. We had heard of such things happening but to actually see, hear and feel those was totally overwhelming.
This lady was very happy that we spent so much time with them and said that they didn’t want the materialistic items; all they wanted was love, and so she asked us to visit the Home every once in a while and spend time with them.
It was great to see the initiatives taken by the Home’s caretakers. All the residents were trained on something or other like screen printing, embroidery works, tailoring and so on.
Apart from education, the children were trained in their field of interest. It was great to see every child have his/her goals set and to see them work towards achieving them. Some of them wanted to become a police officers and eradicate crime, some others, doctors to serve the poor, others singers, etc. We were truly enthused by them and had a sense of respect for them as well. We took back a memorable experience with us and desire to visit again sometime soon.