Paripurnata
A few years after marriage, Bimli Soren became mentally ill. She wandered away from her home in Jharkhand and ended up in Kolkata, where the police picked her up and had her admitted to the Kolkata Pavlov Hospital in March 2008.

She was brought to Paripurnata in August 2008 for psychosocial rehabilitation. Bimli is illiterate and unable to converse in any but her own dialect. After working with her for several months, the staff at Paripurnata were able to put together information on her family and their place of residence. With the help of the Jharkhand Police, her family was traced and messages sent to them. Her father arrived with two of his neighbors and took her home in August 2009.

Paripurnata’s Mission
Paripurnata was Shadhika’s first project in Calcutta. Paripurnata’s objective is to rehabilitate “non-criminal insane” women from Calcutta prisons and mental hospital. Without Paripurnata some of these women might have spent all or most of their lives in prison, as their own families could or would not accept them. Even now mental illness carries a strong social.

The law that allowed the incarceration of non-criminal women at the whim of a hostile family has since been turned over, and Paripurnata now draws its residents primarily from among mentally ill women who are marginally functional but capable of rehabilitation.

New Services
Until 2009, Paripurnata inducted its residents from jails and government mental hospitals. Starting last year, the organization started looking at the wandering mentally ill, admitting six mentally ill women, who were wandering the streets of Kolkata. They were initially looked after by Iswar-Sankalpa, a local NGO, and were handed over to Paripurnata for psychosocial rehabilitation. Of the six women, five were reunited with their families in far off places like Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra. One is still undergoing rehab.

Shadhika helped fund Paripurnata’s new building that houses the women during the rehabilitation and has plenty of room for the various therapeutic and vocational activities. In 2010, CNN-India bestowed the ‘Real Heroes’ award on Paripurnata for the exceptional support they are providing for the destitute and mentally ill women on the streets of Kolkata.

Photo Galleries
2006, Women’s Portraits in 2006, 2004, 2002