Category Archives: Memories

B is for Braille

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B for Braille is a song that is an initiative by White Print (India’s first lifestyle magazine in Braille) and I heard it first when it was showcased in the channel called ‘MTV Indies’ in 2014. The song is in Hindi, and the English lyrics are displayed on the screen as the story progresses on the screen. The story is of a blind boy in a lower middle-class family, who is fidgeting with his toys restlessly when he discovers an object which has a paperboard cover and it makes a rustling sound when shaken.

It’s a book. To him, it’s as good as nothing so he shows his mother the book. She advises him to ask his father to read it to him. He stands in front of his father and shows the book ‘Malgudi Days’ that he is holding. His face shows the excitement that a kid feels when it is seeing the train for the first time. He discovers a world other than his own when his father reads him the stories. His father, at one point, has to leave his child as he works in another part of the city. That leaves the child disabled.

Before he encountered the book, he had known disability all his life to the extent that it was part of his life. He hadn’t known any other way to live his life other than by his parents’ constant assistance. He thought that even though he is blind and others are not, everyone is disabled in some way or the other. The thought gave him comfort.

But when his father left for work; he had a book with him that he couldn’t read, let alone see. The book was a stark reminder of his inequality, his disability, and his inability. Before he discovered the book, he used to play inside the four walls that defined his home because he never thought of playing outside. From the time he started to make sense of the world around him, he knew that his world was severely limited and that he couldn’t have a normal life that normal people have. He had accepted it just like you accept that two and two equals four. That was just how things were, and they can’t be changed. Can they? Can you change the result of 2 and 2? No. It’s a scientific, universally accepted, undisputed fact.

With that book a part of his reality now, he stumbled upon the truth that he is ill-equipped. Everyone around him can view their reality without rolling their eyes haplessly in every direction, walk without having to bump into something, groom themselves without having to part their hair the wrong way,  and see the wound on their body due to rough play. He couldn’t do anything. If he knew the meaning of the word ‘Impotent’, he’d name himself that. He couldn’t part from the book because the book was proof that he was missing out on pretty much everything, even if the mere existence of the book in his hand gave him pain and uncertainty. He thought how could he be deemed real if he can’t have the same experiences as anyone else?

With the advent of the book in his life, he had stopped playing with toys. What use is a toy that you can’t see, when the book described a world that he can imagine? Surely people will think that a blind man can only imagine in shades of black, who are they to tell? He might as well had made his own colours in his mind to fill the world that he was being ushered into, with his father holding his frail arms and guiding him with his voice and tone. He’d be a little happy if he had known that the humans can only see a minute part of the light spectrum, that he can imagine colours that no one else can simply because the others have taken the colours that they see as an undisputed reality and hence gave up on creation.

Not long after, he hears the familiar footsteps. His father is standing behind him; he can sense his father’s guilt. He knows better than to just go and hug him, how could he show him a better world and leave him abandoned? Didn’t he know that his son would be lost in Malgudi? But he missed his father equally, as much as the world that he had shown. He threw himself on him, and locked his arms around his neck. He thought that this time he’ll never let him go. His parents take him to the National Association for the Blind, where a teacher introduces him to the braille script. His joy knows no bounds; the doors to the world were open to him. He could visit any place he wanted, he could meet anyone he liked, he could be whoever he wanted to be. In his unadulterated and pristine joy, his parents took a step back and watched him learn. For that is all children want really. They want to make friends with the toys, pencils and rubber balls. They want to make friends with words.

This is what it is, really. I saw the video for the first time, and tears were trickling down my eyes. I wished no one saw me crying because then I’d have to explain them why I am crying (‘over a song? Really?’ is what people would exclaim), and I wanted to be seen crying so that I can be asked the question I ask people often (‘Are you ok? Do you want to talk?’). I’ll never be able to imagine the life of a blind individual, but the song gave me an infinitesimally small glimpse of it – enough to help me empathize and feel the world through the child’s eyes. That is what art is – you see a movie, and it makes you feel about something you’ve never felt before. And even if you have felt it before, the artwork helps you gain a new perspective that will help you become self-aware. Every human can only experience so much by itself, hence the anecdotes and stories and legends and cave paintings and novels and songs and sculptures and movies.

B is for Braille.

My escapades with art

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My first true encounter with art was when I read comics. The characters in the comics had a life of their own, independent of the handful of panels they occupied the space in. I always thought that even after I’ve read the comic, the world goes on for the characters. Characters like Chacha Chowdhary, Sabu, Pinky, Suppandi, Nagraj, and others seemed to keep me entertained with their stories and anecdotes. Then there was Phantom which was as elusive as the character itself. I knew that I had to read all the previous comics to understand what’s going on in Phantom and Nagraj, nevertheless I used to read them and savor the experience – you will not always know whatever your real-life human/being has gone through, you are a passing cloud and not the person whose life you just entered.

Whenever I hopped into the train for a long distance journey (any journey more than 10 hours is a long distance journey), I made it a point to have my mom buy me comics. And, I used to devour it in a couple of minutes and would go on and re-read it.

Then came the era of children’s magazines – it had a healthy mix of comics, anecdotes, short stories, out-of-the-world events, puzzles, and quizzes. One magazine would easily keep me entertained for more than a month, I would read and re-read it – as if to extract the last drop of the nectar. Now that I think about it, it’s funny that I am talking about it all and not include my age. True, in one way, my growth can be measured by the kind of books I read. There was the comic books phase, then came the magazine phase, then came the fiction phase, and so on. I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll go chronologically.

With magazines, I found my love for reading articles. Some articles used to be merely half page long, some would run to 4 and 5 pages. I didn’t realize that such articles were simply preparing me to read novels and non-fiction material which ran over 1000 pages at a time. I didn’t bother playing much, and I was good enough for myself. When I used to be bored and didn’t have anything to read, mom would give me a fistful of rice and ask me to count. It kept me occupied. On other days, I used to take a sewing thread roll and unthread it only to re-thread it. I was a cat.

Probably in my high school days, I got myself my first novel. ‘Chanakya’s Chant’, it was called. I got it in the Chennai Book Fair. I loved (still do) the concept of a book fair – books and books, and a child can get lost in the umpteen counters! It was around the same time that I got exposed to non-Indian music. The songs I first listened to are naturally the ones that I still hum today – Wonderwall, Fireflies, what not. Now, here is where the lines get blurred. I went into an experience overload and started gorging on movies, series, music, instrumentals, books, maps, paintings, murals, and anything that I could interpret for myself.

I had the joy of reading the works of giants of humans in their own right. I had the honour of watching movies and series made by visionary filmmakers. These ‘escapades’ immensely shaped me.

I took a dive into the deep ocean, head-first. I tried to find why a movie was made the way it was made. I started to appreciate the background music of movies. I used to listen to the background music, and it had a calming effect on me. The entire experience was so intimate, so personal that I doubt if I’ll be able to type it all and do justice to my experience in the first place.

As I type, my mind is playing ‘Kagome’s Lullaby’ for me. It’s from Inu Yasha, an anime series. I was so deep in the ocean that the soulful voice of Natalia Lafourcade found me. And yet, I feel like I have barely scratched the surface. There are only 7 ragas (notes), yet I’m humbled by the sheer number of original music churned out by the maestros. Whenever an artist exhausts his muse, he or she takes liberty and creates a world of its own. Lovecraft – Octavia – Gaiman – Mary – the list goes on. I realized it too late that I could have made a career in art or critiquing.

But then again, I also know that I write only for the sake of writing. I tried; I tried so hard to write and print pages so that I can sell a good novel and get myself a Wikipedia page. Who am I kidding? The minute I try to write something that I can impress someone with, my pen’s ink bleeds dry. You know about article that got published in ‘The Hindu’? I didn’t even proof-read it. Before that article I wrote on motherhood, I had sent more than 5 articles to the newspaper for publishing. I never got a reply. So, one fine day, my muse took over and wrote the article, and I sent it to the newspaper via e-mail. I forgot about it until it got published.

As I type, I have a fully formed novel idea (replete with character arc, plotline, chapter summary and preface) and 2 nascent novel plots with me. I simply am unable to write them. Yet, I’m able to write what I’m writing.

I started writing this piece in hopes of capturing a few of my escapades with art. Turns out, I’ve merely listed out the reasons why I can’t do so.