Author:
Publication: CNN News
Date: August 15, 2008
URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/08/15/heroes.sankurathri/index.html
Story Highlights
* Chandrasekhar Sankurathri's wife and children were killed in an airplane
bombing
* The loss inspired him to help with blindness and education in a rural Indian
village
* More than 1,200 students have gone through a school his foundation built
* Most of more than 137,000 cataract surgeries at his eye hospital have been
free
In a single, tragic day, Chandrasekhar Sankurathri
lost everything he loved.
"Nobody should go through what I've been
through in my life," he says.
Sankurathri's wife and two young children
were flying on Air India Flight 182 from Ottawa, Canada, to Bombay, India
(now known as Mumbai), in 1985 when a bomb exploded, killing everyone on board.
"I used to think maybe they landed someplace.
Maybe somebody rescued them, you know," he says.
For three years he stumbled through his daily
routine as a biologist in Ottawa, not wanting to believe the truth.
"I was really lost," he remembers.
After considerable soul-searching, Sankurathri
made a decision few others might -- to turn his personal pain into an opportunity
to help those less fortunate. In 1988, he quit his job, sold his home and
returned to India, where he was born, and where he believed he could do the
most good.
"India has so many problems," says
Sankurathri, 64.
Two in particular caught his attention: a
lack of school attendance and rampant blindness. With the money he had, Sankurathri
created a foundation in his wife's name, and in turn, built a school and an
eye hospital in the small rural village of Kuruthu, not far from his wife's
birthplace. Today, his foundation's efforts to empower the poor through education
and health care are having significant success.
Since it's creation in 1992, Sarada School
-- named for the 4-year-old daughter Sankurathri lost -- has grown from one
grade to nine. More than 1,200 students have graduated and many of them have
gone on to high school and college. Sankurathri keeps in touch with past students.
"We act like a big family," he says.
In a country where the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization estimates the national primary school
dropout rate is more than 50 percent, Sankurathri proudly says that not one
of his students has ever dropped out.
The same buses that pick up students for Sankurathri's
school in the morning are often used later in the day to bring eye care patients
from other rural areas to the Srikiran Institute of Ophthalmology, Sankurathri's
eye hospital, named for the 7-year-old son he lost. Since the hospital's opening
in 1993, more than 137,000 cataract surgeries have been performed, 90 percent
of them free.
"We see close to 350 outpatients a day
and perform 80 surgeries per day," he says. "Our mission is to provide
quality eye care with compassion, which is equitable, accessible and affordable
to all."
But Sankurathri has found that getting patients
the care they need often requires educating the public first.
"In India, people are so ignorant. They
think cataract blindness is not curable," he says. "They are not
aware that it is curable and that it is a simple operation."
In fact, about 75 percent of India's estimated
15 million blind people could avoid blindness with prevention or medical treatment,
according to Vision 2020 India. Sankurathri is amazed and delighted by the
transformation that occurs after each cataract surgery.
"Just within a few hours, you make their
lives totally different," he says. "Their whole life changes --
the way they walk, they act, they smile."
The goal, Sankurathri says, is not only to
help the blind see again, but also to lead a better life. Sankurathri has
been back in India for almost 20 years. He insists his work does not make
him special.
"I'm just an ordinary human being trying
to do my best to help others."
He also believes his journey to honor those
he loved has not been a solitary one.
"I feel very close to my family. I feel
they are here with me" he says. "That gives me a lot of strength."
