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Tuesday, March 13 (2001) - Leaving London
This is my third visit to India. The first was in 1985, when I was just 18 and on my very first foreign modelling assignment. I had never been outside Britain before and it was so different from Newcastle where I'd grown up - the colour, the heat, the smells. I fell madly in love with the place and I vowed to go back one day.
In January this year my wish came true when I went to India for my 33rd birthday. I travelled all over Rajashan, spent a few days in Goa, then back to Jaipur for the highlight of the trip, a ride on the Palace on Wheels - the Indian Orient Express. I'd always dreamed of going on that train. I was so excited I spent all night looking out of the window. There was a full moon and there were lots of people living beside the railway line with their fires lit. It was magical.
So it was a terrific shock the day I arrived home to hear about the Gujarat earthquake. It was so close to where I had been. I just couldn't believe it happened and my immediate instinct was to get back there straight away, because I knew that where there were earthquakes there were always amputees.
There was a feeling of destiny about it. The first amputees I ever saw had been in India 18 years ago when I walked out of Delhi airport and saw legless men pushing themselves about on skateboards and children holding out stumps of arms begging. I was so shocked that I handed out money like sweets.
I didn't understand then that it was the wrong way to help: that begging is often run by organised crime and that some parents even amputated kids limbs because it made them better begging prospects. So in handing over money I was simply feeding this racket.
Today, I know that to really help the amputees another approach is needed and, because experience supplying limbs to landmine victims in the former Yugoslavia and in Sierra Leone, I will be able to help in a much more concrete way. I plan to organise a fitting day so that amputees, doctors and limb-makers can get together.
