Page 170 - Demo

Hyderabad. The President of India, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan called on PVG Raju in Hyderabad. The President had known him from his childhood and wanted to enquire about him personally and wish him well in what everyone knew was a long recovery. Through most of 1965, PVG Raju was mostly an invalid and his recovery was painfully slow. Regaining physical control of his body was difficult despite getting back to what yogic exercises he could manage to do. Regular physiotherapy also proved to be of limited benefit. His speech had also been affected badly and therefore his social interactions also became severely curtailed. He was not mobile, and people could not visit him as his family was very protective and did not allow access to him. This was a bigger blow to him. He had been a globe trotter and well-travelled within India too. He had taken off, when young, on a cycle from Vizianagaram to Madugula, a town nearly 100 kilometres away.However difficult this was going to be, PVG Raju seems to have decided at this stage that he needed to make a concerted effort to recover his faculties to the extent possible. Towards the second half of 1965 he went to the finest centres for rehabilitation and physiotherapy in Europe for advanced treatment. Talking about this period later, he said,%u201dMy gross body should, in a mundane sense, be physically dead in May-July 1964 after the car accident at Nangal. My body was kept alive in the Post-Graduate Medical Institute, Chandigarh for 79 days by divine grace, and I stand before you. My physical body was so badly damaged that I was taught to walk and talk like a little child through physiotherapeutic treatment in Derby, U.K. and Cologne, West Germany. My little ego took 2 years to learn to walk, and for my 156