Author: Anjali Doshi
Publication: India Today
Date: February 23, 2004
Introduction: Adversities in her
life have turned her vocation into a mission. Having gone through the ordeal
of kidney failure, dancer Niketa Ghiya now raises money for poor patients
through her shows.
She was 16 when her kidneys failed.
A Bharatnatyam dancer since seven, Niketa Ghiya had to have a kidney transplant
and was advised by her nephrologist to give up dancing forever. The next
13 years were mired in depression and drugs as her body rejected the kidney
donated by her mother and the steroids left her disfigured and broken.
The medicines caused rapid loss of vision compelling her to undergo two
cataract surgeries. She would often weep as her resolve to fight crumbled.
Unable to work even part-time and having developed gynaecological problems,
Ghiya "didn't know what to do with myself". Life had become a dreary timetable
of dialysis sessions.
The turning point came when she
attended a friend's arangetram. It was at this dance event that Ghiya found
her calling. Much against the wishes of her doctors and family, she took
up Bharatnatyam in 1999. Rather fittingly, her first performance was held
at the Muljibhai Patel Urological Hospital in Nadiad-a 45-minute drive
from her home in Ahmedabad-where Ghiya goes for her dialysis sessions thrice
a week. "After that performance, the doctors never told me not to dance
again," says Ghiya.
It was a new beginning. Ghiya realised
she was fortunate to have a family that could spend Rs 25,000 on her treatment
every month. There were many who could not afford dialysis-Rs 1,100 per
session-and the costly injections, so she decided to perform charity shows
for them. The first show was at Junagadh in June 1999. She followed it
up with shows at Vadodara, Valsad, Ahmedabad, Vapi and Chennai. Besides
setting up a Rs 22 lakh fund for kidney patients at Muljibhai Hospital,
Ghiya has also instituted a fund for children with failed kidneys. In all,
Ghiya has raised close to Rs 50 lakh. "What began as a personal mission
is now becoming a movement," she says.
About 20 patients benefit every
month from the fund but Ghiya believes her mission is incomplete till she
can ensure treatment for everyone. She knows it is difficult. Owing to
her rigid dialysis regimen, she can't travel out of Ahmedabad for more
than three days. And her performances don't last more than 45 minutes as
that is all the energy she can expend at a go. But you could never tell
by just looking at her. An attractive 33-year-old with lucid eyes and a
soft face, Ghiya looks reasonably healthy until she rolls up her sleeves
revealing swollen and knotted veins from years of dialysis.
But giving up is what Ghiya has
unlearnt forever. "Everything begins small and gets bigger," says the indomitable
philanthropist. There's no reason her mission will not.
