jammie's jarful

stayin' alive

CHAL is a network of non-profit organisations, and individuals committed
to serve the disabled by establishing remote rehab centres near their homes.

CHAL collaborates with professionally managed entities
to synergize resources, avoiding duplication and overlap.

CHAL’s first partners are Murshid Hospital & Health Care Centre and
Pakistan Institute of Prosthetic & Orthotic Sciences (PIPOS).

CHAL’s supporters include corporate entities, international donors, and philanthropists.
CHAL’s target is to raise Rs 100 million this year. We are at the halfway mark.

contact: chal.khi@gmail.com
visit http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/chal

If someone were to ask me what I did to commemorate the tragedy of October 8, I would have to say nothing. It was a Sunday. I woke up late, having had a long work week and I watched a movie with k before some friends came over for a very impromptu iftar plan.

I do however remember last year and how I felt for weeks, maybe months afterwards. Alive. Alert. In control. Galvanized into action. Filled with ideas. I remember going to the PAF base with anything I could find- to be a part of the help. I remember driving alongside other cars with people wearing that same expression of intent, of purpose. I remember the lines of motorcycles, cars, vans filled with whatever was within their means all congregating at locations to help. I remember the weeks afterwards spent setting up collections, loading vans and then moving onto longer term plans. I remember thinking to myself, Wow I'm a part of something here. That feeling of unity is one that I don't recall feeling ever before.

My mother used to tell us stories of the '71 war. Of how she and her friends, in their twenties were so caught up in the whole feeling of patriotism that they would have done anything for their country. That, at that moment, all that mattered was that in some way, they had a purpose. As aides, as helpers, as anything. They wanted to be a part of it in any way they could. I always listened to those stories, fascinated. Frankly speaking, it all sounded very novel-romantic. Very Danielle Steelsish. Wars. Commitment. Sacrifice. But in the safe cocoon of my reality today, it was hard to imagine feeling that incredibly passionately, to have reaction pulled out of your gut withhout a moment of thought. Until last year when, as October 8 went down in history, I felt something in us shift, awaken, rising to some call beyond that of mere duty. And that's all it took to make me realize that, when we need to be, we can be so alive.

posted by jammie @ 6:07 PM