Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The first time I entered the institute for the blind, I realised that the exterior with all its blooming, multi-coloured flowers had left me completely unprepared for what I was going to confront. The inside, somehow, seemed unrelated to the world outside. I wondered why.
Then it struck me. Of course, there were no lights! I did not see a single bulb or tubelight till the farthest particles of light that my straining eyes could trace. It was dark well before sunset.
Strange. Or maybe not so strange, really.
It was my first day of voluntary teaching at the institute. A document to the effect had to be signed. I had to write the date below my signature and I suddenly realised that I had forgotten the date. Also the month.
For a few terrifying seconds of disorientation, I could not remember what season it was. I had to look at how I was dressed to find out and wondered if the boy who had handed me the document had noticed my confusion.
He had not. He couldn8217;t see.
There were children going hand in hand, chatting animatedly. The quiet ones walked alone. They clicked their fingers rhythmically to warn anyone coming from the other direction.
Inside Garhi, I viewed the usual activity with the new found sensitivity of a first-time, non-participant viewer. Outside the sculpture studio Mukul Panwar and Brij Sharma were chiseling away on stone, unmindful of the sweltering heat or dripping sweat. Inside the studio, Ashok Prajapati was heating up wax while Golu scooped out clay. Shashi greeted us, her hair awry and hands full of plaster.
Another artist was bandaging the injured hand of a friend. I stifled an involuntary smile as the visiting ladies struggled to don expressions of art connoisseurs exposed to artists-at-work all the time! They had not even noticed the struggle involved in transporting heavy works of art for exhibitions etc. and that sometimes up four or more flights of stairs with the lifts not working!
The four ladies retained a cultivated look of comprehension all through the tour of the ceramics, graphics and painting sections, to drop it only as I escorted them back to the gate. Then, one of them sputtered, 8216;8216;But that is a lot of hard work!8217;8217; It was with the greatest effort that I refrained from quipping nastily whether she had thought that paintings painted themselves and sculptures sprouted from the grounds.
It was a labour of love but labour it certainly was, to suffer the intrusion of those with nothing more on their mind than the talking points that an 8216;arty8217; outing might yield for the next kitty party.
