Challenged

On my everyday travel to office, i need to pass through Kembegowda bus station in Bangalore. While awaiting bus,  my eyes gets chance to see many kinds of people. Everybody being busy waiting or walking or talking or thinking. In this busy crowd some always walk slowly. Its not that they are senior citizens or infants. They are………physically challenged people.

Most of the physically challenged people i have seen are visually impaired. But they are comfortable walking across that big bus station. The word comfortable becomes void once they walk over some shop or person. When they stumble, most people nearby just give them way and become busy in their own terms. Sometimes few lend a hand to take them to the platform the Challenged person needs to go. Most of the time i saw who helped the Challenged had a fraction of second to hesitate first. But immediately they wear “don’t care about others view” mask and start helping. The “view of society fear” is getting encoded in our neurons as we grow old and stop us from things which we are supposed to do out of instinct.

There were few occasions which gave me opportunity to help the Challenged. When ever i use to take their hand and lead them to their destination. They felt most comfortable walking. The time they take to cross the distance with a person’s help is very much lesser comparing to what if they would have walked themselves. After leaving them in their destination my heart always felt like having achieved something.

The last person who gave me the chance to help him, came from a remote area in Bangalore. And he worked there in a textile company. I saw him while i was drinking milk in a nearby shop. I thought he would be regular person who knew the platforms & had the instinct to walk across. But he stumbled very often. So, i followed him and inquired “which platform he wants to go?”. He told he is walking towards the Intercity bus stand & he wants to catch a bus to Dharwad. The main problem we had is, the choice of language for conversation. We managed speaking in Kannada & english along the walk. He told, his name is Manjunath & he is going for a marriage in his native,Dharwad. I told him i knew Dharwad through Sudha Narayanamurthy‘s books. When we reached intercity bus stand & the corresponding platform of Dharwad buses there awaited two most striking lessons of my life. First lesson hit me, when i inquired the conductor of the nearby bus (which was bit superior in service), the conductor informed that, they won’t take this kind! of people. Then we decided to wait for some more time. The second lesson hit me, when Mr.Manjunath wanted to go to public toilet nearby. I took him till inside. I felt bad when he was swinging his hand in the air looking for sections to pass urine. It was one of the bad scenes to be carried throughout my life. Then a normal bus came and he boarded the bus. He was happy that he saved lot of time navigating. I was very happy & sad.

Happy because helped saving someone’s precious time. Sad because the state of facilities & help available for the challenged people in the society.

Why shouldn’t the challenged people also recognized equally? Why the improvements in the technology are not focusing the problems of the Challenged? Why cost effective or government aided technological innovation is not a reality? Something has to be done towards it.

There are many researches going on in the field of Robotics. Mainly on easy navigation of the robots using some top class algorithms. Then why not its possible to help a person who already has navigation ability but missing a piece to complete the whole. Hope someone comes with the missing piece very soon. The missing piece can be seen as an alternate till they get donated eyes.

In the meanwhile a kind request to the readers: If possible, please help the visually impaired to cross or reach places. Let’s be the missing piece till it becomes a reality.

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