EnAble India

This describes one of the special experiences I had in my life. Do read it. Here it goes!

It was a Friday evening; with too much of work during the week, I was getting a bit jaded. Moreover the sense of Friday evening was getting me edgy and wasn’t helping my cause as I had no plans for the weekend. It wouldn’t get worse; there was no movie that was getting released that weekend. People, who know me closely, would understand what kind of situation I was in. Helplessly, I e-mailed Deepti (name changed), one of Wipro batch mates, to know about her plans. I thought, I could be at least engaged in something, if she had some good ideas! But it was disappointing to note that she was busy throughout the weekend. Generally, I would have satisfied myself with this reply, but that day, I don’t know why, I got a little inquisitive and enquired her about the work that was keeping her busy. She replied that, she was a volunteer at an organization named “EnAble India” that worked for the employment of the disabled. She added that she had to be there for registration of the handicapped so that they could be counseled later for the suitable job. Without thinking much, I asked her,”Can I be helpful? Can I join you in this endeavor?” Her response was affirmative and I was glad that such opportunity had come my way as I always wanted to help the society in whatever way I could. I sincerely hoped it would be great even if I could make a small positive difference the following day at EnAble India.

For the benefit of people reading, “What is EnAble India?”
This is straight from the book;
“Enable India works for the empowerment of people with disabilities. We believe that every person with disability has infinite capabilities waiting to be tapped through right training, counseling and rehabilitation. We offer a variety of training and employment services for visually impaired, hearing impaired and physically disabled individuals, to help them gain economic independence and live a life of dignity.”

Saturday morning!
I was all excited to be at the place. I didn’t know the exact location so I called my dear friend. Sometimes it gets very difficult to get her going, especially if it’s a weekend and more so if she is fast asleep. We had to be there at 10 AM and I had called her at 9:30 AM only to find out that she had just woken up. As I mentioned, I would have been jolted if this was not the case. It was frustrating, but as they say, patience pays. Some petty arguments, while on the way, saw us at EnAble India.

Welcome to EnAble India…
We reached the place and met the PR officer there. As expected, she knew Deepti; realizing that I was new, she began to detail me about the institution and the work they did. I could see many people in line before the front office and the volunteers were interacting with them for completing the registration formalities. The milieu was so pure, encouraging and you could see everyone working there for a noble cause with no personal interest. I was getting a feel of things around me. Just then I happened to meet the Director of EnAble India. She too briefed me about the institution and explained me the work for the day. I was now getting comfortable.

In comes Subbiah…
In midst of all this, I heard a person coming from behind me, he was shouting “Deepu, where are you?” He was Subbiah, an important person in the scheme of things, who took care of all the volunteers and got the work done from them. He was calling Deepti and was waiting for her to speak up as that was the only he was going to know as to where she was. Yes, he was blind, but that didn’t seem to have affected him. I could find him more enthusiastic and more productive than a normal person. He was all busy with the work planned for the day. Deepti introduced me to him and he was happy that young and so-called rich people (as we worked in Software company) like us were not far behind to support such noble endeavors. What happened after this amazed me, to say the least! Subbiah, as he was head of volunteers, took me to a computer to fill in my registration form since I too was joining there as one of the volunteers. I thought I had to start the PC, browse to the form, print it and then fill in my details. On the contrary, Subbiah started the PC, he logged on to the system with Username and password, browsed to the shared location where the form was located and asked me to load the form with my credentials and save it in my name. All this fascinated me. He was too confident in handling the computer. I wondered, why he had put on a head phone for operating a computer. Later, I came to know he took the help of software called JAWS that spoke for the blind and guided him as it did for the other blinds. I completed the registration form and duly saved it. What next?!

Learning experiences!
After completing my registration formalities, I went back to Subbiah. A very busy Subbiah guided me towards Deepu, as he calls her, and asked me to accompany her for the rest of the day. This made me a bit comfortable as Deepti was more experienced than me and I didnt know anybody there apart from her. That day, many candidates with assorted disabilities were invited so that they could get enrolled with EnAble India and could be further counseled for the job, depending on their capabilities. We had to help these candidates filling the enrollment form.

My, rather our, first candidate was a blind guy. We started filling his enrollment form with the required details. After his name and address, came his qualification. I was happily shocked to know he had completed MA with Ist class and was now pursuing his PGDM from an institute providing distance learning. To top it, he was an expert of Carnatic music, played various instruments and had won different awards at the state level. We were his fans straight away. No second thoughts! Really these guys had it in them to fit against all odds. Wander how could we do it? It was easy for us to complete the form; we later submitted it for further processing. But we hadn’t experienced a tricky situation at work as yet.

Fortunately, at first, we got candidates who were either blind or physically disabled. But we had not handled candidates who could not speak. Our next candidate fell in this category. Now, this was a challenge for us. Fortunately, he could hear and knew a bit of Hindi apart from Kannada. We managed to get the form done with all the credentials. But what we could not get out from him was his Government Registration number which he should have had as he was handicapped. One of our senior volunteers; she came and spoke to him in Kannada and got it for us. Next time onwards we knew, we had to ask for the registration number by making a sign with our hands similar to one we make to bus conductors to suggest him we have a pass. Ah ha! We were beginning to catch up with things!

We also faced some tricky situations…Stay put to know more….