On August 18, 2024, we found a woman near Thekra railway crossing who identified herself as Shobha. Her mental condition did not seem stable, but she had no difficulty walking or moving around. During our interaction, we realized that her language was Telugu, which we could not understand.
Gradually, we tried to communicate with her. From the little broken Hindi she spoke, we learned that she was from Hyderabad. Shobha Devi mentioned her husband’s name as Yadeya. However, she could not remember any phone number or the exact address of her home. She did mention that her house was near the Sai Baba temple in IN Nagar, Hyderabad. Beyond that, she could not recall anything else.
As time passed, on December 3, 2024, we used Google Street View to locate the Sai Baba temple in Hyderabad. We contacted the temple priest, but due to the language barrier, the priest could not understand us. Eventually, he connected
Shobha with her sonus with another person who knew a little Hindi. That person spoke to Shobha Devi in Telugu and tried to understand her home address.
The person then visited Shobha Devi’s house and contacted her family. On December 4, 2024, Shobha Devi’s son arrived by flight. He told us that due to his mother’s mental condition, she had wandered away from home and lost her way several times before. He was overjoyed to see his mother and thanked our organization.
Shobha Devi’s son took her along and left for Hyderabad. This entire incident reminds us that through a combination of humanity and technology, we can bring positive change to someone’s life.
NGO SAPNA’ was registered in Delhi under the Societies Registration Act on 21st October, 2004. It was founded by a group of professionals who shared a dream to work on a people-centric model of development in areas of health, education, gender, community development and social welfare. Inspired by Gandhian ideals of ‘Sewa’ i.e. selfless service, SAPNA’s mission is to work/act as an ‘agent of change’ to support and empower the poor and the marginalized. 