Heart To Heart Connection

THE HEART-TO-HEART CONNECTION

Hearts stand for love. Big hearts represent generosity. Having a heart symbolizes compassion. But when the heart is unhealthy, none of the above stands a chance.

“Save a Heart....Save a Life” is a project undertaken by Rotary Bangalore Yelahanka. The aim of this project is to provide financial support to perform paediatric heart surgeries.

We have so far helped 105 children since the starting of the project. Our project partner is the “Needy Heart Foundation” which co-sponsors the expenses towards surgery and executes the project.

Our project focus is on congenital heart diseases (CHD) in children from poor families in the age group of zero to 10 years. Congenital heart diseases refer to structural or functional heart defects, which are present at birth. This is one of the most common birth defects in developing countries and it is on the rise. The only treatment for this is surgery. Though India can boast of modern cardiac facilities at internationally competitive rates, it is out of reach of for the economically weaker sections of the society.

Rotary Yelahanka sponsors the surgery of children after a thorough examination by cardiac experts from well-known hospitals like Narayana Hridayalaya, Manipal Hospital, Jayadeva Institute of Cardiology, Columbia Asia etc.

What started as a small project a few years ago, when Rotary Yelahanka was supporting 5 to7 surgeries, has now become a major project, growing steadily since 2018. In 2019-20 we have been able to support over 65 paediatric heart surgeries with unstinted support from the corporates and our dedicated partner, the Needy Heart Foundation. We are hopeful to organise many more surgeries to help the needy children in the coming years too.

Rotary Yelahanka not only organises the surgery for children but also visits the hospitals to meet the children and their parents. It is soul-nourishing to see the recovering children with their smiling parents which give immense satisfaction and inspiration for us to help more and more ill children from poor families.

LIFE IN LOCKDOWN – Covid -19 Syndrome

Since March 25^th the whole country has been in lockdown due to Covid-19 Pandemic. Though necessary the lockdown to control corona has thrown normal life in disarray. Most of us have been feeling anxious and stressed due to frustration and depression. There has been no socialising and since the enforcement of the new norms of wearing mask and social distancing, normal life has gone out of gear. Buying essentials itself has been a herculean task and very painful.

Initially I tried to call up a few friends and relatives to relieve my stress but that only added to my depression and anxiety. In order to cope up with stress and anxiety I started thinking of activities that interest me and the first one I chose was to spend more time in our small garden. My wife was working from home, but she supported me whenever she could spare some time from office work and household chores. The result was amazing. Our lemon tree, Banana plant, Custard apple and passion fruit started blooming and have started yielding abundant number of fruits.

Since gardening does not take up all my time I looked into other activities and unsuccessfully tried reading books on Kindle which I could not focus on. So I turned to music. I started listening to old songs which kept me going for the day. My nephew who is in USA also chipped in by sending songs sung and recorded by him to bolster my spirits. In the evenings my wife would be free, so we started watching English serials which both of us enjoy. It has been a difficult time even with Unlock one and cases shooting up in my home state Karnataka.

It is not to say that this lockdown has been without some positives. Being from the generation where we did our banking transactions with passbook and cheque book and using cash for payments, since it became nearly impossible to go to banks or ATM’s we had to adapt to Digital payments. Thanks to the help from my friend we changed to make all payments in digital mode using apps. Today we buy everything including groceries, milk, vegetables & fruits, through digital payments. Our Utility bills such as electricity, water, DTH bills, and phone bills are also settled digitally. We also pay for our domestic help and daily newspaper digitally and hardly visit ATM’s for cash. Another benefit was that our fuel bills were almost zero since all movements were restricted.

All said and done the pandemic effect is still stressful and depressing as no one knows when this will end. I used to travel a lot earlier to various countries and places and being cooped up at home is truly frustrating. I hope that in the coming days the situation will improve when we can get back to our normal life. Till then it is mask, hand washing, sanitising social distancing and “stay home stay safe” for one and all.