Gurdaspur Diary: Crusade against drugs earns Republic Day honour for counsellor, lawyer

There is a saying that first you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you. Ditto for heroin addiction! Once you taste the “sweet, sparkling white powder”, you are instantly hooked to it. The border district of Gurdaspur is known for the high incidence of heroin use among youth. Pakistani drones, with payload of narcotics, regularly enter the Indian territory. They normally drop the consignments in rural areas, a substantial part of which lands at the doorsteps of addicts.

The Red Cross De-addiction Centre, managed by its Project Director Romesh Mahajan, is obviously overworked. Dozens of addicts, also known as ‘patients’, make a beeline for the centre every week for rehabilitation. The backbones of the centre are its woman counsellors. One of them is Abha Sharma. Her work was finally recognised by the district administration following which she was felicitated during the Republic Day function. Over the years, she has acquired an experience which is bound to stand in good stead in the de-addiction centre’s fight against drugs. “We often try to rush into tasks or want to accomplish goals in a short time, but this approach does not work with addiction recovery. Successfully recovering from drug addiction requires you to take one step at a time. A little bit every day goes a long way. That is the reason why I have to be patient with my patients. Patience is not simply the ability to wait, it is how we behave while we are waiting,” said Abha Sharma. She says overcoming addiction is not easy at all. “You will often most likely wake up to days filled with temptation and then you struggle to avoid that very temptation. Some days, patients lack the motivation to continue the fight. This is where my role comes in. I tell the boys that life in itself is a series of relapses and recoveries. Fall seven times, stand up eight times. This is what I try to imbibe in these people who are fighting the battle of their life,” she says. Many addicts who have been rehabilitated are now enjoying their lives. They still remember her which in itself is a big tribute to Abha Sharma. The centre added yet another feather to its cap when a young law graduate Kanwar Pal Singh too was honoured during the Republic Day festivities. His job is to identify addicts and motivate them to seek treatment. And he does this with unbridled passion! Both Abha and Kanwar deserve a pat on the back for being an integral part of Gurdaspur’s fight against the drug menace.

Discovering disabled ‘unfriendly’ buildings in Dinanagar

Residents have demanded a high-level probe into the sequence of events leading to the construction of the new SDM office building in Dinanagar which neither has ramps nor lifts for the handicapped. Townsfolk say the district administration should identify more such government buildings where such facilities are non-existent. Actually, the issue would not have come to notice but for the efforts made by a Dinanagar resident Sunil Dutt who doubles up as an RTI activist and also a human rights one. Now, Dutt is in the process of ‘discovering’ such buildings across the entire district. He has also written to the Union Government citing the fact that such structures violate the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act-2016. This young man is a one-man army and never tires of fighting for the rights of the residents. (Contributed by Ravi Dhaliwal)

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