An Indian community on her shoulders

Dr Devenapally Shashikala provides food and support to compatriots who cannot find employment in Dubai.

Dr Devenapally Shashikala provides food and other assistance to men at Karama Park in Dubai.

DUBAI // Every morning, just before sunrise, Dr Devenapally Shashikala fires up her stove and spends the next three hours cooking 20kg of rice, 20kg of daal and spinach curry. She then prepares to help some of the neediest cases in the country. The charges are not her patients at the Al Misbah Medical Centre in Karama, Dubai, but a group of illegal immigrant workers who have come to rely on her charity.
By day, Dr Shashikala is a general practitioner tending to patients in a small clinic. By night, she spends eight to 12 hours feeding, clothing and counselling about 50 workers who have nowhere else to turn. The men, mainly from the southern Indian province of Andhra Pradesh, are stranded in Dubai. They say they came here seeking work and gave their passports to a recruitment agent who, in return, gave them employment. But, say the workers, the agent failed to return their passports with the promised working visas, meaning that after their three-month visitor visas expired, they were unable to find work legally - and eventually unable to support themselves.
Dr Shashikala has been cooking for the men since June last year. She has also worked to raise funds for their tickets home. So far, she estimates she has helped more than 1,000 men return to India, but the stream of people needing her help continues to flow. "These people speak my language and in a way they are my family," she said. "They have no money, no shelter and if it wasn't for the people helping me to feed them they would have no food, either."
Dr Shashikala is one of an informal network of helpers. Many of them may not know each other, but every day they tackle the increasingly worsening conditions of those at the bottom rung of society. Some help children with special needs get through school, others collect clothes for labourers, while others help to counsel expatriates out of debt and even off a ledge. "New people come to me every day asking for different things," Dr Shashikala said. "At first, I dipped into my own funds, paying for scores of them to go home. But now I am at the lower end of my resources so I have to help them in other ways.
"I look for sponsors to buy their tickets or to provide us with practical things like transport to and from the consulate and the airport. I continue cooking because it is the most important thing. If they don't eat they will die." After her morning surgery, with the help of some of the men, Dr Shashikala carries the food to Karama Park and serves it on plastic plates to the group. At 3pm, Dr Shashikala returns to her apartment to cook their dinner. She goes back to the clinic until 9pm, when she doles out more rice, daal and curry in the park. Often, she has more medical emergencies to deal with and usually does not get to bed until after midnight.
"Every day I am physically and mentally exhausted," she said. "But then I look into the faces of these men and see how unhappy they are and I know I have to keep going." Rajaram, a labourer who has been here for nine months, has his right arm in a cast after falling off a building site. He received no support from his employer because he was working illegally. Dr Shashikala first saw his injuries at her clinic and sent him to Rashid Hospital, where he was treated free of charge.
Despite having an emergency passport from the Indian consulate, Rajaram cannot afford the Dh850 (US$231) for a ticket back to Chennai. "All I want is to go back to my family in India," he said. "I have four young children and I came to Dubai to support them. I didn't realise I was going to end up in this situation. Now I just want to go home and start afresh." Rajaram's story is echoed a hundred times over. But for some, the situation is even more tragic.
Narsaiah Gonnett, 28, married recently and came to Dubai looking for ways to make money to support his wife in India. After being reduced to the status of an illegal immigrant, he became sick with worry. This month, Mr Gonnett died of a heart attack. His brother and only relative in Dubai, Mallaiah, came to Dr Shashikala in a desperate state. "He was very upset," she said. "He didn't want to call the authorities because he is illegal himself and he was afraid of being arrested. I had to sort everything out. Now his brother's body is in the mortuary. They will allow me to repatriate it once I have paid the fees of Dh2,800."
The doctor will get this money from a donation. She has a team of six people who visit the local community asking for help. One of these men, Keshav, spends all day walking the streets approaching strangers. "I just explain our situation and ask for their sponsorship," he said. "We don't take cash, we ask them to give some money to a local travel agent for a ticket or to the people who provide Dr Shashikala with the food. It is hard work, but there are so many people who need help we have to do it."
Elle Trow runs an organisation called Helping Hands. With the help of her husband, Roger, she collects and distributes donations of food, clothing and care packages to the underprivileged. Through support from the expatriate community, Mr and Mrs Trow come to Dr Shashikala's surgery every week and deliver tonnes of food, clothes, towels, bed sheets and toiletries. "We have lots of things like toys, kitchenware, curtains and toiletries given to us through Helping Hands, which now go straight to Dr Shashikala," Mrs Trow said.
"We support her by taking dried food and cooking oil for the feeding programme and from our own funds, we pay for medical expenses and some of the tickets to India." Dr Shashikala admits that if it was not for the sponsorship she receives from the Dubai community, she would not be able to continue. However, she is looking for further help. "I'm not sure how long I can go on like this," she said. "I am tired and there's only so much of my own money I can spend.
"I would like help with the cooking, maybe through sponsorship from local restaurants, but the most important thing is getting tickets home. None of these men want to be spending all day struggling to survive in the scorching sun in the parks of Dubai. They want to be working to support their families. If they can get back to India they can do that."
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