The Hindu Business Line : `Doth God exact day labour, light denied?'

BOTH groups of PE-II cleared in the first shot. 72 per cent in law, 61 in tax, and now he has a long period to wait before taking up CA Final. He is searching for a firm to do articles, and they ask him what work he can do. "I can't work at the office computer," he says. "And I need to move about when there is sunlight. I may not be able to tick vouchers or total columns of numbers off a register." They sympathise with his problem, but that doesn't make him happy. "I don't look for sympathy," he says. "Only some help. I want to learn things." And he moves from one office to another, even as they scratch their heads wondering how they can fit him in their workplace. "Can the world be so limited?" I ask him, and he shrugs off.

Meet B. Jairam of Nagpur who lives with a degenerated retina that offers a vision which is near blindness. Whether he was born with retinitis pigmentosa or whether it was due to a fever that attacked him when he was only a few months old is something that doctors debate over. He didn't suffer the usual isolation in a special school, but grew with normal children, though for him blackboard was just a black patch, and people existed as voices and noises.

He remembers his good friends — so many of them — who would first copy in his notebook and then take up their own. His chums read out for him even during his preparations for CA exams even as his doctor advised him against any serious strain. "They would read pages, volumes," he fondly recollects. "Only, they didn't pass the exam." Jairam uses software to scan and listen to the `machine-reading' and depends on his uncle, aunt and friends to explain accounts, costing and taxation. Because the computer would read one line on the liabilities side, and then move on to assets side, and then the next line on the left and so forth, he explains.

He wrote the exams with the help of a `writer' who would read out the question first. "Suppose you needed some clarification with some earlier line?" I ask him. "I keep storing in my head all that is read, and if I suddenly wanted to listen to a point read out a few minutes ago, I would tell the writer to repeat that point," Jairam says. "But he/she would start all over again and that reduces speed a lot."

The more I chat with him, the more I wonder how difficult even the simplest of accounting problems could be for somebody visually impaired. "Can our exam system be so tilted," I ask myself, "that it can exclude a whole bunch of people who can't see?"

Yet he scored 98 per cent in accounts in Plus 2 and won a scholarship, ranking 75th in the district. He has a National Scholarship from the Department of Culture to help him pursue the other passion — classical vocal music. Jairam is a B-High in the AIR and has given performances all over the country. I nudge him to sing a song. Kurai ondrum illai, he begins. "No demands?" I tease him after he finishes. "When we have something we don't realise its importance," he talks philosophically and I think that has a message for students who are blessed with vision. I push the day's newspaper in front of him and ask him to read the headlines in mota-mota letters of 48 point-size. He jams his face to the paper and is able to make out a few letters, and gives up. "I can't learn by reading. With a very powerful light, I can manage a bit," he says. "But it would too slow, too painful, and too strenuous."

"What are your secrets Ram?" I know I am pushing him. "Write, contemplate, hard work. One has to be sincere, have seriousness in study, and adopt the right approach. And passion." "Passion?" I ask. "Yes, we can enjoy the subject if we don't do a superficial study." "All the best!" I wish him, stretching my hand. "Thanks," he says, ignoring my handshake. `How very insensitive of me,' I bite my lip, and pat him. And he slowly walks by in a world that is hazy and blurred, with no white cane or dark glasses, and if Aishwarya Rai or Hrithik Roshan stood on the kerb I doubt if he would notice.

JumpTheOdds@hotmail.com

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication

Stories in this Section
The business of pleasure

What in hell is XBRL?

Getting familiar with FEMA

`Doth God exact day labour, light denied?'

Manufacturing spurious drugs is equivalent to mass murder

A day has a hundred pockets of time