Blindness That Cripples

Blindness that Cripples

Morning sun was bright and the street down the apartment balcony was bustling busy with traffic. Loud honking of cars, Auto rikshaws, reverberated between concrete structures on both sides of the street. As I listlessly watching down the road a caravan of humans, walking one behind the other on the foot path caught my eyes. They walked one behind the other, about ten people, singing a prayer loudly, the forward one holding a stick for the one at back to hold and get guided to follow the line . I guessed they are all blind. True they are all blind entertaining the walkers appealing for alms.

I recall my child hood days when my uncle was a victim of total blindness that snatched his vision right from childhood. During my visits to spend holidays with my grandparents I used to observe my his ordeals. Struggling to reach the cup of tea on the table; slowly following the wall by hands to reach toilet or go to his living room; requesting us to help him change his dress. it was a struggle in darkness as a blind. He lost his eye sight during childhood due to chicken pox much before the dawn of real life with its multitude of joys or sorrow, thrills or boredom.
Sipping lazily, brooding over agonies that the blind are subjected to, instances crawled in my mind's eye one after another flooding with deep sense of sympathy to the blind. It was the day I was eagerly waiting near our college notice board to see results of our final year examination with many of my friends. It was a shock of life time for us to see one of colleague being helped to the notice board in anticipation of his final year examination results like us all. He was totally blind, being helped by his brother to make him know the result. We recalled, he was hale and healthy, with normal vision like any of us, wrote the examination a few months back. He was a brilliant guy among us with many aspirations and dreams to achieve big in life. In fact he had secured a top rank we saw on that day. Words of sympathy wouldn't get back his vision; he was doomed to darkness for life, his optic nerves were dead, depriving light and colour from his life.

I was shook up to reality from the deep recollection by the honk and thud of a bus ramming into a car creating a huge commotion all over. Police van, Ambulance arrived in minutes, the injured were shifted soon to hospital. I was dumb founded watching all this drama down on the busy avenue from my balcony.

Soon I realised, whatever be our dreams and aspirations in life, the result we achieve are dictated by multitudes of external influences beyond our control, Call it luck, destiny or whatever. Permanent blindness is one such.