Nargis Dutt Cancer Foundation holds prayer meetings

Sunil Dutt's death is not only a great loss to India, but to the entire global community, reports Lalit K Jha.

Expressing deep shock and dismay over the news of sudden demise of Sunil Dutt at Mumbai, members of the Nargis Dutt Cancer Foundation in US said this was not only a great loss to mother India, but also to entire global community as he always stood for the "underprivileged".

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"His humility was his greatness. He was great human being. He has left a legacy behind," Kamal Dutt, his nephew, told HindustanTimes.com, minutes before leaving for Mumbai from Chicago.

Kamal Dutt, a successful entrepreneur, is secretary of the Chicago chapter of the Nargis Dutt Foundation, which was founded by Sunil Dutt in 1981 at New York in memory of his wife, the famous film actress Nargis, with the objective of carrying out treatment of cancer patients in the Indian sub-continent. Nargis died of cancer.

"It is under his visionary leadership that the Foundation in the US has so far collected and donated $ 30 million (more than Rs 130 crore) for treatment of cancer patients in India," an emotional Kamal said.

Recollecting his last telephonic conversation with Sunil Dutt on May 21 along with the Foundation's global coordinator, Rina Rao, Kalam Dutt, said: "We talked about our next donation of a mobile cancer hospital (worth Rs 1 crore) to Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute in rural Uttar Pradesh."

The Foundation has already donated three such state of the art mobile hospitals - mostly for rural areas - and several others are in the pipeline, he said.

During the conversation, Sunil Dutt told them he was going to Cuba in the first week of June on an official trip and would drop in for a meeting in US on way back. "We were planning to have a big celebration of his 76th birthday on June 6. Now this is not going to happen," Kamal Dutt said in a choked voice.

Soon after coming to know about the sudden demise of Sunil Dutt, Rao got in touch with all local chapters of the Nargis Dutt Cancer Foundation. "We had a prayer meeting Wednesday evening," she said from San Francisco.

While the Chicago chapter has decided to organise a big prayer meeting after the return of Kamal Dutt from India, the Seattle chapter would be holding it next week. "This has been shocking news for all of us. Despite his poor health, he continued to serve the poor and common man," remarked Raj Shah, president of the Seattle chapter.

"Last October, Dutt sahib spent an entire day and attended the fund-raising dinner for the Foundation. He was so simple. I never felt that I was talking to a Union Cabinet Minister. He had promised that he would be coming here again this year," said Kirti Kavi, an active member of the Foundation in Seattle.

A close family friend of Sunil Dutt for nearly 30 years, Sanjay Puri, said: "He always worked and lived for the cause of poor and underprivileged." Puri heads the Houston chapter of the Foundation. "India is going to miss him a lot," he felt.

Rao, said besides organising local prayer meetings, the Foundation was also planning to hold a prayer meeting at the national level and bring out advertisements in his memory in the local press. "Details are being worked out," she said.

According to Rao, social cause was very close to the heart of Sunil Dutt.

Sunil Dutt had once stated: "The Foundation in the US has become a pioneer charitable organization that bridges the emotional gap between the Indians living abroad and those in India. Though Indians have settled in every part of the world, it is for the first time that such concerted effort has been made to establish a Foundation which channels resources of the entire expatriate Indian Community and their American friends for one common goal to upgrade medical care in India."