Myopic Vision

It is drizzling, my friend and I curse my team mates , as we think, it is their prayer which brought rain( prayer not for world good but because of jealous as they stay in office and we leave home early :) ). As always I leave the decision making to my friend about leaving in rain or not. My friend decides to leave, so we share the single umbrella and walk towards the bus stop, which is a good ten minutes walk.The Single Umbrella obviously left us wet. When we walk on the main road, my friend gets her bus and leaves with the umbrella, which leaves me enjoy every single raindrop. By now, the drizzle has turned into a heavy downpour. I walk in the rain, stopping all the vehicles while crossing the road, giving a chance for everyone on the road to scold me. I reach my bus stop and miss as many buses as possible, just to get drenched in rain. I get drenched till I realize that, I have an unavoidable meeting in an hour. Cursing my manager, I get into the next bus.

The moment I enter the bus, all the heads turn towards me - as am wet, and everyone else is dry.To my disappointment, none of the window seats are vacant, and I am sharing one-fourth of a seat with another lady. I am busy searching my wallet, and not noticing the person sitting next to me. When I lift my face with a proud smile on finding the wallet, I notice the look in the face of the girl to my front. It clearly says "I have never seen a crazy girl like you before". I smile back saying, "I know it". I get a call from my darling friend. I talk to him in English, I suddenly hear the person sitting next to me, say something in Kannada, I turn to see if she is talking to me, I then realise, God has been partial, as she was blind. So, she probably thought I was talking to her. I could feel the sudden surge in me, but I don't know how to react. I tell my friend that I will talk to him later, and I see her with compassion. My thoughts suddenly drifts to the usual questions like, "why they?".She is not just blind, she wears a not so good, old sari and a glass which looks a little broken. On a thorough scan, I assume she is not so well off financially too. I wonder what they do for their living.

I have met a few blind girls before, when I volunteered to write exams for them. I found that it is definitely difficult for them, to survive, in this world of cut throat competition. I then remember that I was asked to copy in the examination by almost everyone, whom I prompted for. I was not in a mindset to understand their world initially.But later on when I spoke to them as a friend, I found that they would have achieved great heights, had they been normal like me without any disabilities. Though that made me realize that I have wasted my life wich I consider a gift,I decide not to think about that, as that is not the focus.I feel it is not fair on my part to brand them as being dishonest, as they have a valid question, "how do we read everything when we can't afford to buy the whole book in braille? How do we read when the volunteers don't read more than a chapter for me? ". I am reminded of my preparation for exams. I am sure I wouldn't have cleared any of them, without a book. I felt very sorry for them, and ashamed of me, for I cant do anything more than just feel sorry. I get back to the present with the honking of the driver, and wonder if I should continue listening to the songs and read my book oblivious of what is happening around me? I decide to think the way my friend would have thought. He always says, " They are just like us. If you can help them do it, or at least don't feel sorry for them and demotivate them. Dont sympathise when not required". So, I tell myself, they are better than me, as I don't use my gift, unlike them, and I start reading my book with the earphones on my hear and my foot tapping to One Love. The bus is moving in snails pace, stopping once for every half a minute.I am irritated and feel itchy because of my wet clothes. To my dismay my MP3 player stops working (new one :() and I am left with the option of just reading the book. I do that peacefully for an hour, and by now it is dark and the bus is so crowded that I don't get any light to read, and it also makes me feel claustrophobic.

My thoughts again drifts on my co passenger and her disability. I suddenly wonder how will she know of her stopping? I assumd that she would have told the conductor already to intimate when they bus reaches her stop. But, when the 100 passengers capacity bus has loaded 200 already, I don't know if you can spot the conductor. So, again I am worried about her, and decide to help her. But, this is the problem - I don't understand Kannada, which rules out the option of talking to her. I then ask that girl - the one who thought I was crazy, if she can speak Kannada. She confirms my craziness with this question, but still nodded, which I took for a 'yes'. I then ask her if she can talk to the blind lady and find out where she has to go, so that she doesn't miss her stop. There were at least ten pairs of eyes that scans me when I say this. The girl agrees and asks the blind lady the same question in Kannada. The reply stuns me. She says, "I know this is EastEnd stop and I have to go to Jayanagar 5th Block, which is another three stops away".The same ten pairs looks at me as if I committed a crime, I feel like such a stupid for embarrassing myself, by overreacting. I hear a lady say, "They are smart. They know everything". I want to defend myself saying, "I never said she is stupid. I don't know who 'they' are. I just wanted to help.". I ignore all the stares, because I am perplexed. I am puzzled. I wonder "How is this possible?". Had it been a train I cant accept this, as she could have counted the number of times the train stops and could have mapped it to the number of stations, but this bloody bus, stopped once for every half a second. Okay, I can agree if there are any diversions or turns, but this is a straight road, and she is absolutely right about the place. Not being convinced by my ideas,I decide to ask her- "HOW?! ". But, but, I cant - my ignorance of Kannada and my ego - I did not want to ask the girl to translate again - stops me. So I decide to ask this question to my friend later and leave it here for now. Consoling myself I peep out of the window, only to find that I missed my stop amidst all this drama. So it is only me who has a myopic vision , with a gifted vision. But she is normal.:)

P.S

* The 'Z' key in my keyboard ztopz working az I type thiz and my dear friend zuggeztz, I uze 'z' or 'c' inztead. How iz it?*

* One of the main problemz that blind people face iz, lack of study material. It would be great if we come up with zome technology that would be cozt-effective and help them read without being dependent on another perzon.

* Mr. Sivaraman (I hit hard on that key 5 timez. Nothing can replace him and hiz name:)) - my Englizh teacher in zchool. He taught uz Englisg for zix monthz. I Ztill feel, he iz the best teacher I have ever had. Nobody can explain Shakespeare and hiz playz like him. I uzed to wonder if there iz any word in Englizh, for which he doeznt know the meaning. I uzed to wait for him to utter a single zentence with a grammatical error or mispronunciation, stutter or stammer. My wait waz fruitlezz. It never happened. There waz confidence in every word that he zpoke. He is one of the reasonz for who I am today. He tried hard to inztill the zame confidence in me too. I owe him a lot. But why suddenly about him here ??? He iz blind.