Helping Destitute Of Bombay

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31086, 15 June 1966, Page 2

Helping Destitute Of Bombay

Dire poverty, bringing degradation, starvation and a pauper’s death in the streets are the numbing facts of life for millions of Indians. New Zealanders visiting the country are usually deeply moved by its people’s desperate plight, but few are prepared to devote their lives to serving the needy.

Few have the fierce determination and sense of mission of Miss Diana Balemi, a young Hamilton woman who is running a home for destitute and abandoned children in Bombay. “She is just a tiny girl, with a little sharp face and now very different from the well-dressed attractive person I knew in Hamilton,” Mrs J. Ales, who visited Miss Balemi recently, said in Christchurch yesterday. “Helping these children is her whole life now everything else is trivial. She has plans to extend the home and I am sure she will be able to.”

On her return journey to New Zealand from England Mrs Ales stayed for a week with a cousin in Bombay. During her 18-month stay in

London with her husband who was studying new audio visual aids for teaching lang uages, she taught at three multi-racial schools in the East End. There she became very fond of Indian children and decided to offer to spend a year teaching in India. “My mother is a member of the St. Andrew’s Church guild and as they have sent two £5O cheques to Miss Balemi she asked me to call at the home,” Mrs Ales said. Miss Balemi has now established the Door of Hope Society in a four-bedroomed flat —one floor of a four-storey apartment block in a good residential area overlooking the bay. But help from New Zealand is essential. There is no sec-ond-hand furniture in India and Miss Balemi is “desperate” for money to buy equipment. The services of a doctor at a nearby clinic are invaluable for although Miss Balemi has “wonderful organising ability” and works tirelessly with the children, she is not a trained nurse. Although she sold her “thriving” coffee shop in Hamilton before going to India two years ago she relies on financial aid from New Zealanders. “Now she feels she is getting on top of things,” Mrs Ales said. “Americans in Bombay have been very good to

i, her and two influential Ameri- >- can businessmen and one Ind- ;- ian are giving her some supe port. The Catholic welfare ore ganisation provides food for e the children.” n The children who are d brought to the home are pathetically undernourished r and diseased. A little girl who ti had entered the home just t before Mrs Ales’s visit was I- covered in ulcers. t Twin boys, Dilip and Devendra, were brought to the •- home by their father. Their i- mother had 'abandoned them tat birth. Now five months S' later, aged seven months, they !- are alert, chubby, healthy e “handfuls.” Two Indian girls, whom Miss 1 Balemi finds more competent than the New Zealanders or * Canadians she has employed, ■ help with the children. '• “I found the Indians very clean in their homes,” said 1 Mrs Ales. “The ayah who B worked for my cousin changed 5 her sari three times a day ' and washed her hair daily. 1 Prejudice against Indians 1 among young Englishmen and women whom she met in Bomr bay disturbed Mrs Ales. “Young women who have 1 been in India only a few 1 months treat the Indians, par- " ticularly their servants, like dirt. They consider them- " selves superior and say that 5 if they give to one, hundreds ‘ will be on their doorstep. But ’ there are so many ways to help, even if only to a limited degree. “Miss Balemi told me she felt that even if she saved , only three people In her life, ' it would be something. She i does not consider herself a “do-gooder.” She saw a great ' need and felt she must do i something to help,” said Mrs Ales.

“I have a great admiration for her, and understand her feelings. During my travels I often felt a deep shame for our complacent, prosperous life. After all, fate decrees which country we are born in—we have not done anything particularly to deserve being born in New Zealand.” Service at a personal level, such as Miss Balemi’s often brings most sympathy and respect at home and abroad. When Mrs Ales spoke of her work overseas many told her

they considered this a “typical New Zealand gesture.” “On the way to the home I had to ask several times for directions. All the Indians knew where the flat was and were most eager to help. The little boy who showed me in would not take a tip. ‘No. no,’ he said. ‘She nice lady.’ ”