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Prince Charles visits Cheshire Home

By Arunkumar Bhatt

MUMBAI Nov. 5. The old, the infirm and the physically challenged rolled their wheelchairs out into the campus of the Cheshire Home here today to receive Prince Charles.

Each wheelchair was flying the Tricolour and some even had garlands for the royal visitor. Sailors of the Royal Navy's warship, HMS Kent, now on a goodwill visit to Mumbai, arrived well ahead of the Prince and gave a coat of paint to the oldest structure of the Home.

As the Prince walked in, the faces of those on the wheelchair lit up. He moved from chair to chair, enquiring about everybody's well being and cheering them up. When he learnt that Ramesh Kriplani, a physically challenged person, had visited London, the Prince asked him how come he was not lost in such a large city and asked him to come again. Later at a gathering, the inmates sang a song conveying their best wishes to the Prince of Wales.

The Cheshire Home, a global chain of service centres looking after the physically challenged and helping them rehabilitate themselves, was started by Group Captain L. Cheshire of the Royal Air Force who had played a role in dropping the atom bomb on Nagasaki.

Moved by the mass destruction, the renowned bomber pilot decided to serve humanity and set up two Cheshire Homes in England. The Cheshire Home in Mumbai is the first such centre outside England and the third in the world.

Helpage India, the Indian branch of Help the Aged, U.K., of which the Prince is the chief patron, runs mobile health vans in the city to provide medical care to destitute and elderly persons. It had brought its van to examine the inmates of the Cheshire Home and launch a working relationship between the two institutions.

Mathew Cherian, assistant director of Helpage India, said all the medical vans it had were donated by the U.K.-based NRIs. He said the Government had redefined "senior citizens", reducing the age of the physically and mentally challenged persons to 45 years from 60.

Sister Wilhelmine Fereira, in-charge of the Cheshire Home, told the Prince that the Mumbai centre had launched community-based rehabilitation programme for the slum-dwellers in the city.

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