I owe my vision to you

April-25-2012

 

A beautiful Monday morning yet again. Mornings have never been any lesser beautiful to me because every morning I feel grateful for the phenomenon called life, and believe it’s going to be a wonderful day of unimaginable possibilities!

Today is much special as I am doubly assured of the beauty of this day. With an old lady from the neighborhood I have taken a tri-wheeler ride to the examination center in Nungambakkam. She has made sure to keep buffer time in hand, so the student and exam coordinator don’t worry about our arrival. We were sharing a plethora of random thoughts on life, college days, ambition, circumstances, what changes what, also of course my favorite breakfast Idlys….and a lot more along our way to the exam center. It took us 1 hr 40 minutes to reach the college premises and she introduced me to a student named Dharma. Dharma didn’t know who I was and if I even existed, but today he has been waiting for me. I greeted him to say, hello Dharma I am your pilot pen for the day and I have a name - Asti. He smiles charmingly and greets me in diffidence.

Dharma is a visually challenged youth and I have offered to be his scribe for the day. I don’t know what is scribing all about, I have only taken care of small children in my second homes all these years, this is different – Dharma is an undergrad student in his mid 20s with a dream to be visible on the pages of success stories and I have this grave responsibility of helping him attain what he aspires for.  As I open my bottle of Nimboos to kill the heated thoughts in my mind, he asks me if I have ever felt blind. I gaze at him, he is gazing at a blurred hallow on the floor, I hear myself saying yes – and the rest of the answer just goes in my mind - ‘I am blind at this moment, I can’t see anything else than a vision of making this day a lifetime experience for you, my success factor for this day is this exam I am going to write for you and I wish the wheel of time stops after that and I remain this way for the rest of my life – blind, if that's what it's called as.

I was given the question paper and answer sheet, I loved the nostalgic crispness and the smell of my own sunny exam days, where my own aspirations and ambitions sprung. I felt it was no different for Dharma, it's the same exam day, the same excitement, flurrying thoughts and the same dream….with the only difference, that he is allowed to share a vision, with me in his case.

I read the question paper for him, page number 1 till 4, in a single go.  He chooses to start with last section first, because he believes those are the highest scorers, wow I thought I was an odd one when I did it years back! I re-read the questions and he formulates answers and instructs me as a master of his art – Section C oblique Question number 3 – Next line - Black Pen – Side Heading – Introduction – Underline.

I was enchanted, I were writing an exam of MA English Literature – Drama II!

Reading the headline, for the first time in this day I felt nervous. I reconfirmed myself, I can do it and I will…..for him. I was obeying him as an upper KG student and he was enjoying his authority to instruct. I was relishing and loving everything about the art Dharma was narrating. It was one of the Shakespeare's classics.  He was explaining me the conflict of love and honor in that play, and I was engrossed tip till toes. He was explaining me characters, demography, incidences, dialogues and progressions as scattered beads and I was at my best comprehending them as closer to precision and narrating them back in coherent sentences. My small skill was being acknowledged and appraised by him time to time, and I liked his approving syllables – yes! yes!that's what I meant!

I noticed him fanning with his handkerchief and realized it was a power cut in a poorly ventilated humid room which I failed to sense anyways, I didn’t need an energy drink anymore, I was centuries back in Cleopatra’s world where there were no air-conditioners.

I thought of sharing the stock of time with Dharma when he scanned his wrist watch with his fingers and affirmed it was 12 noon. All the high scorer questions were attempted by this time but we still had 50% of the question paper yet to be covered and a mere hour left to do so. I was tempted to panic but he was as calm as a baby in mother’s lap. I took a relaxed breathe and continued scribing ….

He asked me to read all 10 questions one more time, out of which we needed to attempt 7.

By this time he was a scheming brain to me, for the questions in section-B, he asked me to write the same introduction and conclusion part as Section-C/Ques2, woah! I were to do copy pasting without ctrlC+ctrlV ! So what if nature has tricked him an unfeeling way, he knew to answer the trick. I chided myself ‘how can I be this bad in copying, scheming, tricking and a lot of other things…no answer, no time to research either, so I continued to be a pen with less brainer and copied the introduction and conclusion portions as suggested by the master of the day. Dharma taught me a lesson to be smart in a blind world.

Section-3 of the question paper, we were supposed to attempt 10 out of 14, one mark each. I started reading the question for him and jumped like a kid before even finishing – I know the answer! I can’t believe it, without reading Shakespeare I now know the characters and their narratives!

We were given 40 minutes extra to finish our exam, I was grateful that evaluators were sensible to this narrator – transcriber pair. Come to the last 5 questions, I saw him sitting back and saying ‘you know the answer right?’. Lovely, though I wasn’t supposed to ‘know’ them in this exam, I took pride in knowing them for him and I went ahead scribing them, following his approval of my knowledge. When the invigilator came to collect our answer sheet, I quickly glanced through the pages filled with grace and glory – Headings Black and Bold – Characters Underlined – Stages Highlighted – Subheadings color coded and everything else shipshape.

While I was feeling ecstatic, I noticed the first anxiety on his face when he asked me how many total pages mam? I said 47 – he looked closer to satisfied and further inquired, how many questions are we left with? I said 5 of one mark each. He made that one-off reaction that said sheyy! Not enough time!! I didn’t take a minute to reciprocate – hello! we did have time, you didn’t know the answers! We shared a loud laugh together and he gave me a high five – perfectly oriented and I was amazed he was eye to eye with me, perhaps striving for the vision that I have just shared with him. We were friends now.

It's around 2:00 pm, I take my ride to work, wondering in the age of clouds and zombies, where would this little pursuit of vision be placed. I come to work late today but glad it's not too late to be part of an individual's vision and dream, who people thought didn't have a vision and/or a dream.