Those colours of nothingness

My friend Bikash once told me about the time he called on a government official to inquire about schemes and incentives provided by the stat...

My friend Bikash once told me about the time he called on a government official to inquire about schemes and incentives provided by the state for “challenged people”, specifically for those who could not see. The officer quickly obtained the relevant information but then proceeded to tie himself in verbal knots while seeking the elusive phrase “visually challenged”. He fumbled for the right words and repeatedly apologised till Bikash put an end to his agony. “Why don’t you just say ‘blind’?” he suggested. The relieved official did so, and the meeting went off very well thereafter.

Bikash is visually challenged. “I could see that officer was a perfectly decent man who was doing his best to help me,” he explained. “But he was unnecessarily rattled by the gobbledygook of political correctness. I wanted him to know that far more important than the nice words sighted people use to describe blind people is what they actually do to help them get by in a world of sighted people.”

Recently, Bikash visited for a fortnight along with his wife Mallika and daughter Aatrayi. All of eight years old, as energetic and inquisitive as a squirrel, with her chatter and ready laugh, Aatrayi brought a warmth that dispelled the foggy chill of winter. But I noticed a funny thing. The minute she entered any room, she turned on every single light before settling down to whatever it was she wanted to do — reading, sketching, watching TV, “holiday homework”. When I gently asked her to turn off the unnecessary lights, she cheerfully did so; but she showed the same strange desire to turn on all available lights when she entered other rooms.

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I asked Mallika about it. “Just check out how fond she is of colour, and you’ll understand,” she replied with a smile. Like all kids her age, Aatrayi loves to draw; I found her sketches lavishly coloured, but not unusually so. I noticed that she hiked up the colour on her favourite channels till the TV screen was awash in blazing blues and greens and oranges. But realisation dawned only when I heard “and saw” her poetry. Aatrayi is a budding poetess of considerable talent. Each effort is invariably titled “Pome”, and carries great descriptive power and depth of emotion. But her verses are special for another reason: not only does she write her stanzas in different colours, even the words and sometimes letters within words are written in various, carefully chosen hues.

There are so many visible things this wonderful child wants to share with her father, so many things she wants him to see with her. So, in her own way, Aatrayi helps Bikash see what she sees: by filling her words with feeling and colour, their rooms and their lives with light and laughter.