For 21 years
now, Manav Seva Sannidhi has been providing hope to
the physically challenged from all over India. Marwar
travelled to a camp in Valsad to meet the founder Abhilasha
Singhvi, a woman who is easily one of the most influential
persons in Gujarat. We also learnt a few lessons along
the way.
Text: Rachna
Shetty & Reshma Jain
Photographs:
Ankita Sharma

Sympathy is perhaps
the cheapest gift the world can bestow on the afflicted.
For 40 years, sympathy was all that Paliben got. And
then, at the age of 44, she looked the world in the
eye.
Having been stricken by polio in both legs at the age
of four, Paliben could only crawl. After she had her
limbs fitted at the first Manav Seva Sannidhi camp at
Atul, Gujarat, Abhilasha Singhvi noticed that the lady
would not sit down, either for her meals or when asked
to rest. Paliben told her, “For 40 years, I have been
on the ground. You don’t know what it feels like to
see a person eye to eye. The world looks different from
here. I don’t want to sit down.”
Singhvi is still amazed at the statement. For her, it’s
just one of the many memories that form part of the
Manav Seva Sannidhi’s history, where people without
legs are fitted with prosthetic limbs and then taught
how to walk. When she started out 21 years, ago, she
only had the desire to hold this camp. And yet, it was
at that camp that she knew with certainty that this
was her calling.
The latest camp is being held over five days in Valsad,
at Shri Party Plot, a popular location for NRI marriages.
It’s a bright morning and people are already walking
in. Singhvi is busy teaching a young boy, fitted with
a limb that day, to walk. She doesn’t sound too different
from the army commanders who conduct drills at academies
and yet she has a deep and extraordinary understanding
of their need for equality.
“It isn’t just about the physical pain. It’s about the mental and emotional scars that rejection leaves one with. It’s about something as simple as dignity. And that pain was something that I could identify very strongly with, having gone through an emotional vacuum and being absolutely unable to help myself. I couldn’t speak about it to anyone and I just felt I needed to get it out of my system.”