The inaugural winner of SIF’s Individual Award this year, civil engineer Rai became a social worker and now builds shelters for the children of prostitutes and Aids victims, as well as the needy in India.
The Straits Times Cheong Suk-Wai reports…
After he hurt his hip in a road accident in 1997, doctors advised civil engineer Ravi Rai not to walk if he could help it. But Mr Rai, 39, has ignored their advice even though it means he would need hip replacement surgery at least twice in his lifetime. In fact, he is doing more walking than ever, as he visits remote villages in India to preach the importance of education and safe sex.
Since 1998, he has been helping India’s needy from his base in the village of Barhalganj, Uttar Pradesh, where he inherited ancestral farm land. Besides giving talks and building shelters for children of prostitutes and Aids victims, he gives away scholarships of 200 rupees ($8) a month to 200 children, in a place where 450 rupees would feed a family of three for a month.
He says his calling grew from trips with his parents to India as a child, where many of his playmates were blind and their parents shivered in torn singlets in 3deg C winters. All the work is done under the aegis of an organisation he set up in 1998 called Children Of Mother Earth (Come). The Singapore chapter was registered this year and he plans to extend it to Nepal, Thailand and Cambodia.
For his work, he won the Singapore International Foundation’s inaugural award for individuals on May 10. He is kept busy round the clock and has only been back in Singapore for a total of three months in the past four years. Before Come took up his time, he worked for five years with top construction company Koon Constructions, helming such projects as Admiralty MRT and the Kranji sewerage treatment plant. The fourth child in a family of three sons and four daughters has his parents’ blessings for his life’s path.
“An Earthquake hit Gujarat on Jan 26 last year. On Feb 2, my team of volunteers and I arrived in Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat. It was deserted. When I knocked on the door of one of the hotels, the man who answered said “There’s an earthquake.” I replied: “That’s why I’m here.” He let us in and we slept under the open sky in the hotel compound, in case of another earthquake. We helped survivors in the outskirts from 6am to 10pm daily, eating one meal of chapati and brinjal curry a day.
The Gujarati children, in particular, were terrified of the aftershocks. So I convinced the principal of one of the village schools to let me teach them a cultural programme. He was perplexed, but saw the psychological benefits of keeping the children occupied and taking their minds off the aftershocks. One day as part of the programme, I got the children to present a dance to the villagers. One of the boy’s trousers dropped as he was dancing and he tried to pull them up while keeping step to the dance. How we laughed and laughed, and our laughter attracted other villages to the scene. I think that helped them regain a sense of hope. As William Wordsworth wrote, the child is father of the man.
When I talk to students, I always tell them: “If I can come all the way from Singapore to help you, you can also help your country.” I tell them of Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who managed to turn a country without its own water into one with such a good system today. Where I am now, there is electricity for only eight hours a day. So, even if the villagers had TVs – and most of them don’t – they would not be able to watch the evening news. Many can’t afford to buy newspapers, anyway. My mission is to train locals in poor countries by teaching them, so that they can tackle relevant problems in the places they live.
In the four years since I began my work in India, I’ve used up all the $300,000 which I saved from my 11 year’s work as an engineer. But I don’t need anything personally. I have grain to eat from the ancestral land, interest from my $35,000 fixed deposit and about $500 rent a month from my three-room flat in Clementi.
When I was still a civil engineer, I was considered a hot cake in the marriage stakes, but not after I became a social worker. I do not believe in suppressing my physical desires through yoga or meditation, or whatever it is that people do to deny themselves pleasure. But I’m lucky because when I’m doing something, I’m very much into it, and thoughts of marriage or physical pleasure do not enter my mind.
Also, I don’t think of having children of my own because there are already so many children in this world who need parents. So I won’t be selfish and say, “I want children so they can take care of me when I am old.” I don’t see the people I am helping as burden. I used to be a hot-tempered and impatient fellow, so I am grateful that they are giving me the chance to help them – and help me become a better person.”
