The Bethzaitha Rehabilitation Centre for Orthopaedically Handicapped Girls is located in one of the sleepy lanes of Konthuruthy overlooking a plush set of residential houses. Seeing its white, almost spotless building, one wouldn’t believe that it is more than 20 years old. But the building and the institution itself is presently looking forward to celebrate its 27th birthday. So then, what is Bethzaitha’s story?
On March 19, 1927, Father Varghese Payapilly, a resident of Thevara, founded the Congregation of the Sisters of the Destitute with five nuns. The numbers, both of the sisters and the ones they had to care for steadily grew over the years, and it was on September 24,1990, that the Bethzaitha Rehabilitation Centre was founded. Apart from Bethzaitha, there are 45 such houses where more than 1,600 Sisters look after old, physically handicapped, mentally challenged and destitute persons. Bethzaitha’s vision is an integrated development of all people irrespective of caste, creed, sex or religion. While its mission is to provide love, care and support to orthopaedically disabled girls.So how does an ordinary day at Bethzaitha look like? The day starts with prayers and breakfast at around 5.30 a.m. After breakfast, most of the girls go to the mission-run school, while the elder ones stay back and help the sisters in the daily chores such as cutting vegetables, cleaning, dusting and the like.
Shaila, 48 and Jumol, 35 (two of the oldest ones in the home), however, do something more exciting. They make plastic flowers, crowns and bouquets that the local church buys for its festivities, paper bags to be sold to local vendors, or sharply cut plastic boxes lined by a delicate layer of Thermacol used by local vendors to transport electronic goods. In effect, they generate an income for themselves that, the sisters are quick to point out, are credited to their accounts. Some of them also tend to a flourishing garden, which has bananas, chillies and papaya trees. One would be surprised to know that they get paid by the home for the work they do. Not so surprising that the same is later spent on nail polish, clips, trinkets and other smaller pieces of jewellery.
Post-lunch time is for physiotherapy, bathing and washing. Evening again brings with it the solemnity of prayer and spiritual readings from the Holy Bible, dinner and recreation, when the girls sing and dance and make merry, or simply sit around, talking and laughing. “So do the girls have homes, families, whom they go back to?” I ask sister Jiya, who says most of them have families. In fact, all of them except one, is from or around Kochi. “We make it a point that once a year they go back home to their parents,” says sister Jiya. “But most families are reluctant to see or keep them. They face problems of acceptance because of their deformity. Mostly they are close family members; the parents, siblings who show a lack of acceptance.”
Sister Mary Rose adds: “Actually some of them are quite upset when they return. Not because they miss home, but because they are returning from neglect and rejection.”
Jeanette Winterson once wrote, every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle. One would be surprised to know where some of the girls came from, what were their circumstances and such. Piyali (name changed), who is deaf and dumb, they said, used to live in the nearby Vathuruthy settlements, was married, even had a child, as appears from her expressions and what she often tries to communicate.
Although she is mostly incomprehensible, her eyes tell a different story – they brighten at the prospect of someone ready to listen. That she can’t speak doesn’t deter her from trying again and again, to narrate some prized incident that only exists in her memory, which is a shut vault now, whose language key is lost to the world forever.
There are others who intrigue – not because they have a disability, but because of their inherent qualities. One of them knows five languages, while another girl makes beautiful landscape paintings. They all love to sing, fervently looking forward to their Sunday evening ritual of television and dancing. “Each one of them does some work. These two things, work and companionship give them a sense of meaning,” sister Mary Rose says.
Khalil Gibran’s words “How can I lose faith in the justice of life, when the dreams of those who sleep upon feathers are not more beautiful than the dreams of those who sleep upon the earth?” couldn’t be truer.
( The author is a freelance writer )
