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Dubai: "My sons would have grown to be young men today," said Gladys Staines, an Australian whose two sons Timothy, 6, and Phillip, 10, along with her husband Graham, a missionary, were burnt by Hindu extremists in January 1999.
The incident took place in the middle of the night when the father, 58, and sons were sleeping in their vehicle in the village of Manoharpur in the eastern Indian state of Orissa.
Gladys, 56, is in the UAE to attend a function organised to honour her by the Gulf Malayalee Christian Writers Forum in Sharjah, scheduled to take place today at 8pm at Sharjah Worship.
Currently she lives in Queensland in Australia with her daughter and makes occasional visits to India to look after the running of the Graham Staines Memorial Hospital, which was established in 2004.
"The hospital was founded in the memory of my late husband who had been living in India for decades and was actively involved in caring for leprosy patients. It is a 10-bed hospital and mostly we get outpatients. Leprosy patients who go for treatment to normal hospitals do not get adequate care because of the stigma that is attached with the disease. But now with all the awareness campaigns run by the state and the central government in India, things are changing gradually for these leprosy patients," she said.
Gladys, who was conferred the Indian civilian award the Padmashree for her social service towards leprosy patients in India, said she has forgiven the people who destroyed her family.
"I do not have any bitterness. Those who have killed my family I have forgiven them right away. My daughter and I do miss my family. Also there was overwhelming support from the Indian population. They wrote to me not to hold any hatred against them as those who committed the gruesome crime do not belong anywhere.
"I believe that things happen for a purpose in life. We fail to get an answer when we keep asking why me. I know that many people have prayed for us," said Gladys.
She said she did visit the village where she lost her husband and two young sons, a couple of times after the incident and continued to meet the villagers without holding a grudge against them.
"They all loved my husband and me. They called us by 'Dada' [brother] and 'Didi' [sister]. In fact one individual from the village tried to save my husband and sons while they were asleep in the vehicle which was burnt down," said Gladys, who speaks fluent Oriya, the regional language spoken in Orissa. "I cannot speak Hindi," she said.
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