by Ali Gripper
staff came into the courtyard of the hospital voluntarily to
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pack them and load them onto trucks. The mood was very
subdued; more than twenty of the staff had lost their homes,
and many had friends or family members who had perished
in the disaster.
They hired trucks to drive the supplies as far as they
possibly could, up the precipitous roads, toward the villages.
Where the roads were impassable or marred by landslides,
they coordinated with the Red Cross helicopters who deliv-
ered them to the villages. Medical supplies and emergency
shelters were also provided.
Ruit made a television appeal, asking for help. He spoke
from the heart, saying it would take years for the people
of Nepal to rebuild their lives. ‘We need to rebuild houses,
families, lives and morale,’ he said.
Over the years, despite his natural reserve, Ruit had grad-
ually learned the art of public relations.
The support that had been generated by Lisa Ling’s docu-
mentaries and, in a high- profile column by Nicholas Kristof
of the New York Times in 2015, as well as a 13- minute segment on 60 Minutes in the United States in 2016, had made Ruit aware of the power of storytelling. He still feels
awkward sitting down in television studios, but knows the
value of talking about his work with well- respected journal-
ists. He has had no training in public speaking; he’s learnt on the job, a little painfully at times. ‘I’ve learnt to keep it brief and uncomplicated, and just speak from the heart.’
For the earthquake television appeal, he took the same
approach.
Within hours, offers of help arrived from every corner
of the globe: from the United States, the UK, Australia,
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Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, Europe and Swit-
zerland. ‘I was absolutely overwhelmed by the response.
I thought it would raise a few thousand dollars, but, within
a few days, people had pledged almost $1 million. I don’t
think the people of Nepal realised how fond the rest of the
world is of them until then. We were so strengthened by that
support. The faith and love we felt from the international
community was way beyond my expectations, and I know it
kept a lot of people going. The way the Nepalese have dealt
with the problem shows just how patient and resilient they
are. Despite the magnitude of the damage to their houses and
villages; despite all the loss, all the heartache, all the stress, they have remained patient and resilient.’
Ruit was working at his private clinic on that terrifying
day. Just before lunchtime, halfway through examining a
patient, the patient’s chair began to sway toward him. Then
he felt his chair begin to tilt toward his patients . At first, he thought he’d forgotten his blood pressure medication. It was
either that, he thought, or he was dizzy or unwell.
He knew something was wrong when, a few seconds later,
the electricity was cut off and the lights went out. All 25
patients were sitting with him in the pitch dark. Then they
heard a terrible sound: a deep powerful rumble that sounded
like a giant truck heading toward them, or a mountain falling down. As it grew louder and louder, they realised, to their
horror, exactly what it was. The shaking lasted for 50 seconds, but for Ruit and everyone trapped inside, it seemed like an
eternity. Ruit’s clinic was on the ground floor of an older- style building, with only one door out to the street. The ground
was lurching and swaying wildly beneath their feet and the
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contents of the shelves were smashing to the floor all around them. With his heart thudding wildly, and his legs and hands
shaking, he calculated that by the time he’d shepherded all
25 patients out into the street, he might not actually make it out himself. ‘I remember thinking, Okay, this is probably it for me, I’m going to die here trapped inside my clinic as the building collapses on top of me. My time has come. ’
Somehow, though, they managed to scramble out into the
street, only to meet a scene of chaos, mutilation and gore.
The walls of concrete buildings were swaying and crumbling
around them, sending clouds of dust high into the air. Wide
cracks had opened in the streets. They could hear avalanches
from the mountains.
They were all trying to find their feet again, only to be
rocked by aftershocks—the first of more than 200 that were
to come in the following days. There was no mobile reception
and Ruit was beside himself with anxiety about his family on
the other side of town.
All he and his patients could do was to hold hands as
they looked at the nightmare unfolding around them. The
air was filled with the sound of sirens and screaming. People were dying on the side of the road, others were being carried to the hospital on makeshift stretchers. Ruit made his way to the general hospital to help. There were children and babies
crying, and people sobbed inconsolably over dead relatives
and friends who had been brought in on stretchers. ‘There
were so many people on stretchers, they were everywhere.
Some of them were on intravenous fluid. The most important
thing to do at first, was to work out who was dead and who
was still alive. The sorrow and panic were hard to describe.’
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When the official doctors began racing into the hospital,
Ruit began wending his way home through the chaos.
As he raced through the front gate and saw his whole
family standing there in the front garden, he crushed them all in a bear hug in relief. He stayed a few hours so that he and Nanda could phone all their relatives and friends to make
sure they had survived, and he monitored the news. Soon,
word of the death toll started coming through.
Across the country, the losses were immeasurable. As well
as killing more than 9000 people and leaving more than half
a million Nepalese without homes, it had flattened more
than 180 of the city’s ancient temples made out of wood and
unmortared bricks. These were more than just historical sites; they were ancient, ornate public places where people gathered to socialise and do business.
Such was the earthquake’s force that it set off avalanches
around Mount Everest, where at least seventeen climbers died.
Buildings swayed in Tibet and Bangladesh. Tremors were felt
across northern India, killing 34 people and rattling bookcases and light fixtures as far away as New Delhi.
The fact that Tilganga was still standing was a testament to
the dedication and hard work of the unofficial building super-visor, Les Douglas. His insistence on building it to Western
standards had paid off. With its 4- metre- deep concrete foundation, truckloads of steel, and double- brick cavity walls, it stood unharmed apart fr
om some cracks in the stairwell.
The aftershocks continued and, as night fell, many resi-
dents sat on roads afraid to go back indoors. Thousands
camped out at the city’s parade ground or slept outdoors.
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living in tents, with relatives, or in makeshift accommodation.
Tilganga, along with many international charities, continues
to help build temporary shelters for the worst- hit villages—
daunting, grinding work in this already impoverished nation.
Ruit wasn’t the only one to spend hours in the middle of
the night worrying about what to do if another earthquake
hits. For months afterwards, many people suffered a kind of
post- traumatic stress disorder, a sense of living constantly on edge, starting at the slightest sound.
The toll on the blind was devastating. Three of Tilganga’s
thirteen community eye centres which Ruit had first begun
in 2000 were flattened and two partly destroyed. More than
nine of their regular outreach camps were cancelled, resulting in a backlog of 3000 people.
The first eye camp was held eight months after the earth-
quake, at Nuwakot, about 75 kilometres north of Kathmandu,
where more than 1000 people were killed and 1300 were
injured. Despite the fact that winter was setting in, many of them were still living in tents and temporary shelters. It’s hard to imagine just how terrifying it must have been for the blind during the earthquake. Imagine feeling the building shudder
and shake and start collapsing around you, and not being
able to see the door, or being able to race outside and reach open ground. One woman had shouted and cried out to her
family all day before she was found trapped under the bed of
her collapsed house, covered in bruises and scratches.
The world’s media has turned away from the earthquake
relief efforts, and, two years later, tourists had only just begun to drift back, slowly resurrecting the central industry on
which the nation depends. Meanwhile, after being covered in
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metal scaffolding for months, the golden spire of Boudhanath Stupa, which collapsed during the earthquake, is back in place.
Lit up with fairy lights, reverberating with Tibetan chanting, it draws thousands of locals toward it every morning like
a beacon of hope. Not even an earthquake could shake the
Nepalese people’s deep faith in life.
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25
Northern Exposure
The most picturesque places can be deceptive. The former
British hill station of Kalimpong, in the Indian state of West Bengal, for instance, might enjoy sweeping panoramas of the
Himalayas, but unusually high rates of blindness plague
the area.
The Jamgon Kongtrul Memorial Home, like many of the
town’s church- run schools and private residences, was built
during the colonial era on a long ridge overlooking Mount
Kanchenjunga, Ruit’s home mountain. Since it opened in
2004, more than 20,000 patients have had their eyesight
restored there by Ruit and his team.
The Memorial Home, which includes one of Ruit’s commu-
nity clinics, is just one of the 3rd Jamgon Kongtrul’s many
legacies (he was killed in a car accident in 1992). The idea
was born when the lama noticed elderly people doing back-
breaking work smashing up rocks on the side of the road.
Surely, he could provide them with a roof over their head so
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worrying about where the next meal was coming from? After
nine elderly, destitute people were settled into the colonial-style bungalows that made up his family’s former residence,
three orphans were also housed there temporarily. Despite
fears that they would disrupt the peace and quiet, they proved the opposite, bringing joy to the elderly residents and a family atmosphere to the place. The children unofficially adopt a
favourite ‘Po Po’ (grandfather) or ‘Awa’ (grandmother).
They clamber onto their laps, wrapping their arms around
their necks, serving them soup and tea when they are sick.
The elderly, in turn, are delighted to help with homework,
plait the girls’ hair into neat braids for school or help to
wrangle the boys onto the school bus every morning. Laundry
flapping on rooftop clotheslines and children scurrying across the courtyards wielding giant silver kettles of spicy chia tea give the place a feeling of home.
‘It’s a really special bond,’ says Thinlay Ngodup who runs
the home. ‘It’s beautiful to watch sometimes.’ Which is just as well, as the endlessly patient ‘Mr Thinlay’, as the team calls him, oversees everything from homework, to dentist appointments and spiritual care. The resident jack- of- all- trades, he seems to be in perpetual motion. Past the dormitory rooms
where the elderly live, two single beds to a room with a
small Buddhist shrine in between, a group of elderly women
quickly douse out smoke puffing out of a small cooker set up
on the veranda.
Thinlay gently rebukes them. ‘They like to cook their own
dumplings or make tea, even though they’re supposed to wait
for the proper meals in the kitchen,’ he says. ‘They can be
quite naughty sometimes.’ An elderly lady, about 4- foot high, 244
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hobbles over on her walking stick, gives a huge toothless grin, grasps Thinlay’s hands tightly and leans in for a hug. ‘See
you tomorrow!’ she says brightly, trying out one of the few
phrases of English she knows.
In the boys’ dormitory, Thinlay stops to check the tempera-
ture of a sick seven- year- old curled up with the flu under
a blanket on the bottom of a bunk bed. Then it’s down a
short flight of stairs to where the eye patients are temporarily housed, sitting around chatting, eating and resting on
thin mattresses. He tousles the hair of an elderly man resting with patches on both his eyes after a cataract operation this morning. ‘Today, he can hardly see, but tomorrow he’ll be a
free man,’ he says. ‘They don’t have to suffer anymore the
way they used to. The operation is so fast, and the results are so good. Dr Ruit operated on my father, who passed away
last year at the age of 102. Right up until the end, Dad used to sit on the veranda right here, and his eyesight was so good that he could thread the needle for his own sewing.’
In the main courtyard, surrounded by bright pink bougain-
villaea and white trumpet flowers, he points to small buildings where, once some of the orphans have graduated from school,
they hope to run an optometrist, a pharmacy, a clothes alter-
ation shop and a cafe. ‘It’s just one acre, but it’s supporting so much life,’ he says.
Every morning, when the mist rolls away, the 90 elder
ly
folk and children enjoy front- row views of the snow peaks.
In the monsoon season, watching the clouds roll overhead is
like a spectator sport.
Certainly, it’s a life-
transforming place for the blind.
Vibek Chettri, a local lawyer who helps organise many of the
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outreach camps, says the area is so impoverished that they
realised the best way to attract a lot of patients to the eye camps was to advertise free meals. ‘They would come just
to have one solid meal for a few days, and while they were
here we’d check their eyes and then offer free surgery if they needed it,’ he says. ‘Many of them became so much happier
simply because they finally had enough to eat.’
Many of the elderly living in remote villages are both poor
and illiterate, making it too expensive for them to travel to the hospital. Many are resigned to cataract blindness as an
inevitable part of ageing. ‘They’re just so used to old people going blind, they accept it as their fate or a sad part of life,’
Chettri says. ‘They look almost spellbound when they place
their trust in Dr Ruit and discover that they can actually see the world again.’
It’s October 2016, and more than 170 people seeking help
from Ruit are making their way up the steep road to the
Jamgon Kongtrul Eye Centre at the Memorial Home. They’ve
shuffled here clutching onto the back of a friend’s shirt or
dress hem. They have caught buses, sat on the back of motor-
bikes, or been carried on the backs of their relatives to reach this one- acre sanctuary.
Despite the fact that most of them are in dire need, with
bandages over their eyes, the atmosphere is festive. Many of
the women wear silk saris and jewellery, and the men wear
topis, a type of cotton hat. They sit in the sun, chatting among themselves and sipping chia tea. Perhaps it is the patients’
unadulterated faith in the doctor, many of whom regard him
as a living medicine Buddha, which creates such a joyous
atmosphere.
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The first day’s surgery brings one particularly challenging