Inside a cavernous shed lie heaps of stuff waiting to be sorted, packed in cartons and carted away. Volunteers manoeuvre their way around antique furniture, stacks of paintings, a guitar, some cycles and wet grinders. The dusty, musty interior echoes with instructions and the occasional mobile ringtone. It is a race against time to have everything ready for Coimbatore's most awaited annual event – the Vasantha Memorial Trust Jumble sale.
Outside, the man behind the sale, Dr J. Ramanathan, takes a breather to tell us why he orchestrates the mammoth task of collecting, co-ordinating and conducting the jumble sale, every year for ten years now. It is to raise funds to fight cancer.
He first encountered cancer when he lost his friend Banu Pandurangan. He still recalls the long blue skirt and scarf she wore as she tearfully got into the ambulance. He was only six years old then, but he remembers the fantastic stories he heard about what was wrong with Banu. Years later, cancer claimed his mother. "In my mother's illness and death, I realised how little I knew about the disease, even though I was a post-graduate in internal medicine by then," he says. Her suffering revealed a whole new side to cancer that was "unlearnt, untaught and unseen".
Surviving the big C
Ramanathan formed a trust in his mother's name and began his crusade to help cancer patients who could not afford the treatment. The first beneficiaries were Ms P (name withheld), who had ovarian cancer, and Mr Balan, a carpenter with lymphoma. "They were the first to be cured of cancer." They lived to tell the tale. And that is exactly the message Ramanathan wants to spread – that there is life after cancer. "The lack of awareness about the disease is appalling," he says. People would rather die untreated than say they have the disease. Marriage alliances have broken down because someone in the family is known to have cancer. "Cancer is a community disease," he declares, and the only cure is awareness about it.
October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the Trust is running an aggressive door-to-door campaign called Puduvasantham. Volunteers take information on breast cancer to the masses, meeting and talking with school and college students, housewives in residential colonies, working women and others. They demonstrate breast self-examination on mannequins. Mammograms are recommended where necessary. "Around 37,000 women have been covered in this programme," says Ramanathan.
Volunteers with the Trust also regularly spread information among younger people on other kinds of cancer. They have reached 32,000 school children with information on cancer, its prevention and cure. "There has been a huge response in both rural and urban schools to this campaign," he says. The Vasantha Memorial Trust Cancer Centre has world class facilities. And the funds raised by the trust are used entirely for cancer treatment.
Raising hope
The jumble sale raises the precious funds. "It is amazing how people give so generously,” says Ramanathan. “They are from all walks of life and from all over the country. It is a matter of great pride that for 17 years we have run a volunteer-based trust. It is the volunteers who work untiringly round the clock collecting truck loads of stuff, sorting them out and ensuring the sale is conducted smoothly. People come in droves. The response of the public in Coimbatore is overwhelming. It is a small city with a big heart.”
(One volunteer comments that the serpentine queues at the sale remind her of the lines of devotees waiting for darshan at Tirupati!).
"We have given hope to 500 lives. And, June 11 2010 was a milestone," says Ramanathan. "I gave a clean chit to Ms V who came for her final post-chemotherapy check-up. She had first come to me as a 16-year-old diagnosed with leukaemia. Now, at 23 years of age, she invited me for her wedding. Forty years ago Banu died even before she had begun to live. We have come a long way.”
This year the Vasantha Memorial Trust Jumble Sale collected a whopping twelve lakh rupees. Says a jubilant Dr Ramanathan, "With this we can sponsor either four children with blood cancer, or 12 women with breast cancer."
