In a nutshell, this is the story:
- Engineer from India loses job
- Has car accident
- Paralyzed – can barely talk, but uses a laptop and sip-n-puff & Morse Code to communicate
- Visa expires, gets sent to India, dumped in hospital where family abandons him
- Laptop vanishes.
I came across this in the newspapers in India today.
Manjunath Kalmani was a software engineer from India, working in US. He was injured in a car Accident at Nashville, TN, in April 2002. He was paralyzed neck down, and after 5 years in the US, carted off in an air ambulance to India.
He started a blog, while in the US. You can see it here – http://mkalmani.blogspot.com/
He used to use sip-n-puff tech to write with his laptop and blog.
There are only two posts in his blog.
He did not know he would be sent to India. Once in India, he was admitted in this hospital and is now on ventilator as he can’t breathe by himself.
His laptop was taken away. He cannot blog anymore.
He used to use the laptop using sip-n-puff tech to communicate with his family and doctors and nurses. Without the laptop, he can barely communicate – talking is extremely hard for him.
His family back in India has abandoned him as they say they can’t afford the cost of his treatment.
This is India. Such abandonment here means almost certain mistreatment and death in India.
You can read about this plight here in these newspaper articles here and here.
Here is a news segment about him from Times Now TV. They say they could help – I don’t know how. This is where you can contact them if you can think of anything.
Manjunath’s family has not abandoned him. They have been running from pillar to post trying to arrange for finds to take care of his medical needs. FYI, his mother and brother in law are camping in Delhi meeting people to arrange to have a life long support arrangement for Manjunath.
PLS DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE INDIA. And pls do not miscommunicate.
Abandoned – thats what the newspaper reported on Day 1. Now the family is in Delhi, and help has been pouring in.
It seems that they decided that as long as he was in the US, he would be taken care of by US.
Once he was brought to India, his family was informed – but they told the newspaper and hospital that they could not afford to take care of him.
No one is saying they did not care about him – probably they thought the only way was for him to stay in the hospital – and if they go and meet him, the hospital would hand him over to them.
AND WHAT IS THIS ABOUT NOT UNDERESTIMATING INDIA? We all know this is the land of Sati, dalits, caste prejudice and rape.