My personal debt to Dr Shrestha: by Christine Russell

I first met Dr. Shrestha in June 1990 on my first visit out to Nepal as GAP Project Manager. I was new to the country and felt very inexperienced, but Dr. and Mrs. Shrestha, together with Mr. C. M. Yogi immediately took me under their wing and gave me friendship and support. My brief was to get GAP registered as an NGO (non-governmental organisation) with the Nepali government, so that GAP volunteers could go out to the country on a six-month official visa, rather than working covertly on a three-month tourist visa. The task proved to be Kafkaesque in its complexity, and as an ex-school teacher I was totally ill equipped to deal with Nepali bureaucracy. Dr. Shrestha and Mr. Yogi were tireless in their efforts to help and used all their contacts and influence to bring about success. I quickly discovered that Dr. Shrestha was a highly respected person in Nepal, partly because of his skills as an orthopaedic surgeon but more importantly because of the spirituality that infused everything that he did. I have never met two people less concerned with self or more dedicated to serving their fellow human beings than Dr. Shrestha and Mr. Yogi. The Shrestha house became a second home for me, and I saw how people turned up to ask Dr. Shrestha for help and were never turned away, no matter how late at night. Mrs. Shrestha was always there as a warm and loving presence (and an excellent cook), and their affection saw me through difficult and depressing times. Without Dr. Shrestha and Mr. Yogi, the GAP scheme in Nepal would have collapsed years ago, as without registration as an NGO, we could not have continued working there.

But I personally owe Dr. Shrestha a great deal more than gratitude for the help that he gave me in my work in Nepal. It is not an exaggeration to say that he, together with Mr. C. M. Yogi and Mr. B. N. Yogi (the principal of the school in Dang), changed my life quite significantly. I had long philosophical discussions with them all about spirituality and their outlook on life and was greatly moved by their wisdom and compassion. But what influenced me most was the seamlessness between their words and the way they led their lives. Up till then I had been an agnostic, with little time for the rather narrow traditional Christianity in which I had been brought up. Contact with Dr. Shrestha and the Yogi family gave me a much wider perspective on religion and led me to think much more deeply about spirituality, as a result of which I have ended up as a Quaker!

The last seven years of his life were not happy ones for Dr. Shrestha. He contracted hepatitis C, probably in the course of his orthopaedic operations, came to England for treatment and finally had a liver transplant. He endured much pain and spent much of his last months in hospital after his kidneys failed. He endured all of this with the stoicism of his faith and was supported throughout by the tireless devotion of Mrs. Shrestha, whose strength and courage I admire enormously. They did manage one holiday back in Nepal after his transplant, when he met all his family and friends and saw the esteem in which he continued to be held in Nepal. His body was flown back to Nepal for the funeral, and vast numbers of people came to pay him their respects.

It has been a great privilege for me to know a man of the calibre of Dr. Shrestha, and I know that he will have influenced many other people in a similar way. His spirit will live on in his wife and children and in the students at the HVP schools, with whom he was always closely involved. If we can even in a small way live up to his ideals, the world will be a better place.