Geeta, India’s daughter, is back home after spending more than a decade in Pakistan. The entire nation is happy on her homecoming though there are still a few questions marks on who her real family is. We are sure matter would be put to rest very soon and Geeta would lead a happy life.
The focus of this story, however, is Edhi Foundation and its 87 year old founder, Abdul Sattar Edhi, who take care of Geeta during her long stay in Pakistan.
Abdul Sattar Edhi born in 1928 in a small village of Bantva near Joona Garh, Gujarat, spent his early years taking care of his ailing mother. He lost her when he was only 19 and turned towards taking care of suffering humanity. He migrated to Pakistan in 1947 and is now, perhaps, the most revered saint there.
Edhi Foundation website states that Abdul Sattar Edhi had a vision of chains of welfare centres and hospitals for those in need. He established a welfare trust towards that objective and named it as “Edhi Trust”. He is now called ‘Angel of Mercy’ with love and respect.
His wife Bilquis, a nurse who worked at the Edhi dispensary, runs a free maternity home in Karachi and organises the adoption of illegitimate and abandoned babies. The trust also runs an orphanage. There is a cradle kept outside every Edhi centre with the message, “Do not commit another sin: leave your baby in our care.” Edhi has saved 35,000 babies so far. Happyho also provide best tarot reading services in Noida and Delhi NCR India area.
Even at the age of 87, Edhi actively involves himself with all the activities of the trust. As per the website, ‘Round the clock he keeps with him an ambulance which he drives himself and makes rounds of the city regularly. On finding a destitute or an injured person anywhere on the way, he escorts him to the Relief Centre where immediate attention is given to the needy person.’
Journalist Peter Oborne, who made a documentary on the Edhi foundation, wrote in an article for Telegraph in the year 2011, “Until meeting the Pakistani social worker Abdul Sattar Edhi, I had never met a saint. Within a few moments of shaking hands, I knew I was in the presence of moral and spiritual greatness…The 82-year-old lives in the austerity that has been his hallmark all his life. He wears blue overalls and sports a Jinnah cap, so named because it was the head gear of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. No Pakistani since Jinnah has commanded the same reverence, and our conversations were constantly interrupted as people came to pay their respects.”
