Sri's Musings from Bangalore

Reposted from an article in the Deccan Herald, Bangalore
Sudha Narasimhachar

In the Indian culture, daughters and daughters-in-law are said to bring light into homes. A home is never complete without a woman in it. She spreads the fragrance of love and care in the home. Ms.Muktha R. Gubbi has brought light into the lives of not just a home but forty four children and half a dozen other women.

Mathru School for the Blind, a free residential school for blind children is located amidst a group of residential apartment buildings and stands out in that dull group, with its bright colours, aesthetic structure, lovely garden and neat environs. This school offers formal education to blind children under the CBSE syllabus up to middle school and under the State syllabus thereafter, in the English medium.While garbage dumps adorn all other residential buildings, Mathru School has maintained its surroundings spic and span. As I entered this wonderfully designed building, I was welcomed by Ms.Bhagya with a warm smile. As I followed her inside the corridors of the school, I admired the shocking bright colours used for the walls and the dust free interiors.The building is spacious, well equipped and well ventilated with brightly coloured walls. Ms.Muktha later told me that she had used bright colours on purpose to add colours to the colourless lives of the blind. Ms.Bhagya showed me around the school. The two-storey building has a place for everything and everything is in its place there. Lovely visitors’ lounge, office room, prayer hall, teachers’ lounge, dining hall, kitchen, Ms.Muktha’s quarter, class rooms, computer lab, Braille lab, dormitories for girls and boys and neatly maintained bathrooms.

Little did I realize till I reached the end of my tour that Ms.Bhagya was also visually impaired. I was stunned with her confident walk and talk. This was not all. No child or teacher uses any support to move around that building. Everybody walks confidently in the right direction. Never a moment is there any apathy or sorrow or demand for sympathy in the air.

“As any other physically challenged person, I too hate sympathy”, says Muktha, as she unfurls her story of how she joined the bandwagon of physically challenged people. In 1985, she lost a major portion of one of her feet in a serious bus accident and her life was shattered for three years. She did not know that God had such a noble purpose for her life and that the course of her life would take a very sharp turn. After 3 years of harrowing experience, futile attempts for medical help and prayers, Ms.Muktha got used to walking on her amputated foot. She staunchly believes that Guru Raghavendra of Manthralaya has only helped her to get back on foot.

“I could not walk for 3 years. I was then doing my M.A.(Economics). I met with other personal tragedies too. I lost my father. I could never reconcile to the fact that I may not be able to walk for the rest of my life. I went to various places like Jaipur Artificial Limb Centre, to see if I could get some equipment to help me walk. No hopes anywhere. Then I surrendered to God and visited Manthralaya. I poured out all my woes to the great Guru Raghavendra and you may not believe, it is after this visit that I started walking. Till today, I strongly believe that Guru Raghavendra is behind all my deeds and he is blessing me.”

Until she narrated this incident and showed her foot, I could never imagine that she was handicapped.

How did she get inspired to start this school?

“After my M.A., I did my law. I now practice law as well teach in a couple of colleges. Meanwhile, I was in touch with the Vocational Rehabilitation Centre, as a trainee. There I got inspired to do something for the physically challenged children. One day, I met a shattered mother of a 3-year old blind girl child and my field of activity was decided. I started off with a couple of blind children in my house at Maruthinagar, near Yelahanka in 2001. As the numbers started slowly increasing, I put up a thatched hut nearby. After a while, the number of students increased further and I was finding it difficult to manage in that small place. I then planned to have a bigger building of my own and approached the Government for the land.”

In order to expand the school and provide better amenities for the children, Ms.Muktha purchased this 10000sq.ft. site in Yelahanka Satellite Town from Karnataka Housing Board, after a lot of efforts. But she was in for a shock when she found that none of the neighbours around liked the idea of the school coming up there. She faced a lot of retaliation and humiliation from the neighbours. But with God’s grace and her strong determination, Muktha completed this project costing Rs.73 lakhs with purely the donations from kind hearted people from around the world. Asha for Education (New Jersey Chapter) of the U.S. have donated a huge chunk Rs.25 lakhs. The Acharya Educational Institutions, Hesaraghatta has taken care of a part of the construction, while one more organization has donated the solar heating system and lovely furniture costing nearly Rs.60000/- for the classrooms. M/s Birla Foundation have donated Rs.3 lakhs for the project. Many more donors pooled in and helped Muktha realize her dream.

“I never faced any problems in getting funds. Guru Raghavendra has been very kind to me and every Thursday, the auspicious day for the Guru, brings some good news to me. Companies like Infosys and others have donated computers. My mother and brothers were fearing as to how I am going to finish such a huge project without any strong support from the Government financially. But I went ahead boldly because I trusted in God and I had the support of the Government agencies/officials and police in other ways. All my children and teachers are with me in my prayers that will not go waste. Here is my son, sent by God, who may take over this school after me”, she says, cuddling a 9 month old Raghavendra. This bubbly and cute child was abandoned at her doors as a 15-day old infant.

“There are six other orphans too in my school. Besides, among the 44 blind children, 14 are orphans. In fact, even the cook Manjula is a destitute brought to us in a very bad condition. She could not even talk properly. Shown proper love and attention, each soul blooms into a beautiful flower. Today, she confidently takes care of cooking for all of us. She is very dedicated and sincere.” Manjula is also physically challenged. There are seven blind teachers.

Ms.Vanaja, the computer trainer, also visually impaired, explains to us as to how computers are confidently used by the blind children because of a special software ‘Jaws’, which gives out oral instructions. She also demonstrates the E-Slate, which was developed right in that school, as a research project of Ms.Nidhi Kalra and Mr.Tom Lauweres of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.
Though Braille is a wonderful tool for the blind, learning through this technique is difficult. To combat this, Mathru and Carnegie Mellon University created the automated tutor to teach children to use the Braille slate. The hardware is an electronic slate and stylus, called an ‘E-Slate’ which transmits a student’s writing to a computer. Specifically, the electrical contact between the slate and stylus is interpreted by a microprocessor. The computer-based software tutor analyses the writing for correctness and uses text-to-speech synthesis to give students immediate audio feedback on what they are writing. This helps the learner to better understand the cause and effect phenomenon of writing Braille. This is a first of its kind E-Slate and is used by the children of Mathru in a great way. For more information on this log on to http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nidhi/brailletutor.html or http://brailletutor.blogspot.com

All the children are bubbling with energy and enthusiasm. We send normal children to various workshops for self-confidence, public speaking and personality development. Here, all these are taken care of by the mother Ms.Muktha and her dedicated team of teachers. The show-case exhibiting the various shields and trophies won by the children of this school at various events is proof of this. Little Satish and Srinivas readily demonstrate their talent in public speaking and mono-acting. Srinivas rightly speaks about Helen Keller for 25 minutes, without even a small error. Children are sent to music and yoga classes. Wherever they have to go, they go by the public transport buses only and without any problem. Ms.Bhagya says she commuted from Yelahanka Satellite Town to J.P.Nagar for two years to do her Dip. In Teaching for the Blind and secured the first rank, competing with a general group.

“I plan to start an adult education programme and a vocational training centre. I am proud to say that four of my ex-trainees are well-placed in their life today. My goal is to see that all the children educated by Mathru settle well and lead independent lives. I am quite strict with the children, as far as disciplining them is concerned. They know how much I love them and they can do anything for me”, says Muktha.

The school runs purely on donations and the daily expenses almost come to Rs.1000/-. Monthly salaries for the teachers total up to nearly Rs.19000/- and other recurring expenses amount to nearly Rs.7000/-. Ms.Muktha also practices law to help run the institution. Donors willing to sponsor any of these expenses are welcome. Donations are exempted from IT, as per Sec.G. The school can be contacted on 28463992, 9886032632.

As I walk out of the school half-heartedly, the wall hangings with lovely sayings inspire me- ‘Love brings vision’; ‘Kindness is the language which is heard by the deaf, seen by the blind’; ‘All we need is an opportunity and care’.

Sudha Narasimhachar
Yelahanka Satellite Town
E-mail: rvnachar@dataone.in; rvnachar@vsnl.net


About the boy – needing heart surgery (scheduled for April 2007):

Muneendra, a partially blind child aged around 8 years has been diagnosed as under:

‘Congenital Heart Disease/Double Outlet left ventricle/Large inlet VSD with subasterial extension/Small secundum ASD with bi-directional shunt/severe pulmonic stenosis.’

He is an orphan. Diagnosis has been confirmed by three hospitals viz., Jayadeva, Manipal and M.S.Ramaiah Hospital, Bangalore. He has to undergo two surgeries, one an open heart surgery costing around Rs.1,22,000. The blind school is run purely on donations and hence meeting such expenses will be very difficult for Ms.Muktha. The Cardiology Dept. of M.S.Ramaiah hospital have come forward to conduct the open heart surgery during April, 2007 free of cost, provided the school bears at least Rs.25000/- towards medicines and hospital charges. Ms.Muktha would be very grateful if this amount could be donated by some kind hearted donors.

All donations are exempted under Sec.80(G) of I.T.Act.