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Centre for Blind a Beacon of Hope

The idea is to integrate the sightless into the mainstream so they can learn to move around tn the ordinary world

by NyU Daud
A single Olght of step., broad and welcoming, leads into the Aziz Jehan Trust Centre for the Blind
From her frugally furnished office, Trust Administrator Salma Jan takes the visitor Into neat, airy rooms where some two dozen students may be found on any given day. In the prized Recording Room, she turns on a tape recorder which begins lo read out < chapter from the 12 grade course book in Urdu, the na t tonal language.
A young girl puts on ear phones, listens to the entire lesson and later asks for a recording on her own cassette so she could listen to It at home.
A trained beautician holds rapt an audience of six or so women in another room. She promises that in three months she will turn them Into well groomed, confident ladles — ready lo face the world of the sighted — if they come for the weekly sessions.
The Centre is considered an oasis of hope for the blind tn a society where a public support system for such hand icapped Is woefully lacking — where there are no special bus seats or toilet rooms, where the white cane is an embarrassing appendage and where education in Braille does not go beyond high school level.
It was set up tn 1988 by Ms Jan In honour gf her mother Aziz Jehan Begum who had spent the last 32 years of her life in darkness, and who desired that the less privileged blind should be helped to cope.
To build the facilities alone, the project was monumental — Ms Jan Initially had to do It single-handedly. But she had shared the trauma, of her mother's sightlessness, and abandoning the project was out of the question.
She then converted the upper floor of the town house where she lived into what she proudly calls a rehabilitation centre. Friends and family pooled resources to help equip the place.
About 60 blind people have since benefitted from Centre courses and facilities, which arc offered for free. Following the grooming course for women is a cooking course — using no special tools or gadgetry, the class literally follows its nose to cook chapatti (leavened flattened bread), sal
ads and curries.
Ambitions rise higher as the women are told of the Wonders of knitting and sewing The patterns feel intricate. but the women's determined faces tell the observer that even these skllb will be learned in due time.
Shabana. bom with an eye defect, says. "Now J don't have to wall for my mother to get back from work to cook bread My younger sister lights the stove and puts the dough within reach. It may take* me a longer time (to do It), but SUB I have become slightly tnde pendent."
Meanwhile Seema has realised she has dry skin "Now 1 am going to use a moisturiser."
A separate class 1s held for the men In grooming and mobility. Faraz. 16, has cor reeled his unbecoming slouch and has learned to focus his eyes, which used lo shift ha bilually because of blindness.
One problem Is transport, says Mr Jan. "1 am sure many more would come if there arc volunteers to pick up and drop some of the students."
Various other aspects of rehabilitation work have attracted volunteers. Young Salima, herself disabled, called up to say she would be ready to record lessons for the students. One man wanted to read out Fatz, Pakistan's famous poet. Yet another volunteered to record the English course.
Little by little the Centre 1s getting richer in its collection of Braille magazines and books. The Committee Room has playing cards, special games, music cassettes and domino sets. A Braille map of an American city Inspires hope that one day Lahore will have one such map lo improve the blind's mobility.
The idea," says Salma Jan. "Is to inlcgratc the sightless Into the mainstream of life. Blind children must he admit led into, ordinary. school so they can learn to move around in the ordinary world."
An cxJrmplc of the Wind s potentials is Shabana Kha toon, a young girl who trained at the Centre and who later worked as receptionist in a local beauty parlour. She Is now studying for a college degree and hopes to be employed as a telephone operator so she could finish her studies and help put three other siblings — all born blind — through school.