The Audacity of Hope

The audacity of hope! I always liked that line but never really believed in it. Somehow, it did not seem real. It is one of those lines which belongs to the books and is cursed to remain there. Well, that was what I thought until a few days ago.

Imagine this: you get up in the morning, finish all your ablutions, put on your uniform, go to school, get taught in the class, have lunch, play in the evening, study for sometime, have dinner and finally go to bed: a typical day for a child. Yes, you get to wear "civil dress" on fridays too.  You get to draw and paint and read story books and comics. You get to show off your new pencil box your mom bought you or the new school bag u were gifted for your birthday or the cool new radium watch that glows in the dark, which your uncle got you from the states. Isn't that plain happiness? Now imagine doing all that with your eyes closed. Difficult? What if you were further told that you cannot open your eyes ever, even if you wanted to, that you cannot see anymore? Scary? Would you be able to be in a room filled with people who can see and still be confident? Would you still want to go to school? Will the prospect of studying still appeal to you? 

No. At least, not for many of us. But, about 40 kilometers from Hyderabad, there exists a small isolated place with a cluster of buildings which houses close to 50 blind children who are not daunted by their disability. They had passed the 10th standard (some of them with a higher score than many of us) and are now preparing for their PUC (+1, +2) exams. They go about their routine with surprising discipline and almost all of them consider a graduate degree as their career choice. "How?", we wonder. "Why not?", they say.

The place is the first junior college in Andhra Pradesh, exclusively for the blind & visually challenged. It provides free education along with  free boarding, clothing and basic medical facilties for underprivileged blind students. For the first time in the world, students of Nethravidyala Jr. College of Hyderabad appeared for their board examinations using laptops and not scribes (Telugu and Sanskrit are an exception). These students get educated with the help of JAWS, a software for the blind: one of the most convincing usages of technology for a social cause I have seen in a long time, coupled with the good old braille language. Powered by a laptop and a pair of head phones, they go about their preparation, typing faster than most of us.

It was high time we made this visit. We have been contributing to this institute for some time now, thanks to Chakri who first told us about it. Since then, we have wanted to visit the place and see first hand, how they were managing the whole thing. Finally, we did manage to make the effort to travel all the way there last weekend. The visit coupled with the movie "Leader" (thanks to Bachi) left me in high spirits and changed my perception of blind people. It was as if they were telling me, through what they were doing, "Manoj, dude, after all, its all about the way you take it!". I was really impressed by these children. They only had voices for their friends and their hands for support. But the immense talent and hope they possess is simply out of the world. You can't help but smile at their sincere and innocent efforts. The audacity of hope is written all over them!

If you want to check out their website, click here and if you want to talk to someone about the place, you can get in touch with Chakri or me.