{"id":31275,"date":"2023-01-30T16:57:24","date_gmt":"2023-01-30T21:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indianeagle.com\/travelbeats\/?p=31275"},"modified":"2023-02-27T12:55:59","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T17:55:59","slug":"padma-shri-chandrasekhar-sankurathri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indianeagle.com\/travelbeats\/padma-shri-chandrasekhar-sankurathri\/","title":{"rendered":"This Indian Doctor Turns His Grief of Losing Family in Plane Crash into Zest for Social Service; He Gets Padma Shri This Year"},"content":{"rendered":"
Let your bucket list feature the Sankurathri Foundation if you\u2019re traveling to India, especially Andhra Pradesh this summer. A visit to the Sankurathri Foundation campus in the coastal town of Kakinada is no less divine an experience than a pilgrimage<\/strong>. At the entrance of the campus, your attention will be caught by the larger-than-life statue of three human beings underneath a sprawling tree. Their unpleasant demise in the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight gave birth to the extraordinary journey of Dr Chandrasekhar Sankurathri, who has been named a Padma Shri awardee this Republic Day 2023.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Padma Shri Dr Sankurathri, 79, is a living embodiment of what Helen Keller said, \u201cAlthough the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.\u201d His life of success and happiness in Canada turned upside down after the crash of Air India flight 182, from Montreal to Mumbai, over the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland took away his wife and two children. However, unlike tragic heroes in literature and cinema, Dr Sankurathri transformed the darkness of grief and loneliness into a beacon of light for the underprivileged in rural India.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n