Reading for Suresh Kumar
He is from Thiruchendhur doing his second year BA Literature, in Pachaiyappa. And he is blind.
After agreeing to do voluntary work, I was told to go to one Bharath Senior School in Adyar at 4. "Reading is from 4-6p.m.", they said. Arriving at the school, I was asked to choose to read tamil/english. English, being my obvious choice, I was sent this student whose exams were fast approaching in October. Thats how I met Suresh. I guided him to the nearest bench and made him sit next to me. He opened his plastic bag, and took out his 'History of English Literature' and handed it over to me. "I've read till Bernard Shaw. We need to start from the next writer", he said. While I flipped through the pages, frantically searching for the topic, he said, "Look over English Drama", and I found B. Shaw.
The next writer was , J.M. Synge. I started reading, quite aloud. When he stopped me and asked to move to a different place, to get away from the other voices that were disturbing him. The class was itslef filled with lots of blind students and their readers. We left the class and walked to the school playground, found ourselves a bench and sat down to an evening of hard core English playwrighters.
Though I was reading aloud, I was constantly looking at him for expressions and reactions. His eyes were half closed, as I could see grey pupils beneath them but he had this constant smile over his lips that I still cannot stop thinking about. His english knowledge was barely enough to understand complicated descriptions, neither was mine, but I was trying hard to make him understand, trying to replace with tamil examples, but was only left feeling a little disappointed in myself. The more I tried to make him understand, I felt I was misleading him and felt quite at loss whether I was doing any justice to what I was teaching him.
He did feel sleepy. :) Yes, after about an hour he was trying to shut out his yawn but in vain. He was trying to be polite. But could not stop when a big one conquered him. Which was when I yawned too! When we were done with two writers and a half, I stopped for a while and asked him how he coped up with this subject. He said they had tapes that they constantly listened to. And about exams? Do they type it? "We have scribes for that. Tomorrow if you decide to write for me, I will have to dictate my answers, and thats how we submit papers. We have 3 hours for that. They give us 15 minutes extra."
I usually accept to try new stuffs. Sometimes they make me bored stiff and some really make me interested and exceptional cases, clueless. This was one such. I looked over the playground in the middle of our session and there were school children playing in the playground and more than a dozen people with their readers spread over the corridors that encompassed the ground. What a contrast!
When we were done with the session, he asked me whether I would come the next day. I really did not know. I did want to and the same time confused whehter I would help him at all or waste his hours of study.
I dont know. Tomorrow is another day.
After agreeing to do voluntary work, I was told to go to one Bharath Senior School in Adyar at 4. "Reading is from 4-6p.m.", they said. Arriving at the school, I was asked to choose to read tamil/english. English, being my obvious choice, I was sent this student whose exams were fast approaching in October. Thats how I met Suresh. I guided him to the nearest bench and made him sit next to me. He opened his plastic bag, and took out his 'History of English Literature' and handed it over to me. "I've read till Bernard Shaw. We need to start from the next writer", he said. While I flipped through the pages, frantically searching for the topic, he said, "Look over English Drama", and I found B. Shaw.
The next writer was , J.M. Synge. I started reading, quite aloud. When he stopped me and asked to move to a different place, to get away from the other voices that were disturbing him. The class was itslef filled with lots of blind students and their readers. We left the class and walked to the school playground, found ourselves a bench and sat down to an evening of hard core English playwrighters.
Though I was reading aloud, I was constantly looking at him for expressions and reactions. His eyes were half closed, as I could see grey pupils beneath them but he had this constant smile over his lips that I still cannot stop thinking about. His english knowledge was barely enough to understand complicated descriptions, neither was mine, but I was trying hard to make him understand, trying to replace with tamil examples, but was only left feeling a little disappointed in myself. The more I tried to make him understand, I felt I was misleading him and felt quite at loss whether I was doing any justice to what I was teaching him.
He did feel sleepy. :) Yes, after about an hour he was trying to shut out his yawn but in vain. He was trying to be polite. But could not stop when a big one conquered him. Which was when I yawned too! When we were done with two writers and a half, I stopped for a while and asked him how he coped up with this subject. He said they had tapes that they constantly listened to. And about exams? Do they type it? "We have scribes for that. Tomorrow if you decide to write for me, I will have to dictate my answers, and thats how we submit papers. We have 3 hours for that. They give us 15 minutes extra."
I usually accept to try new stuffs. Sometimes they make me bored stiff and some really make me interested and exceptional cases, clueless. This was one such. I looked over the playground in the middle of our session and there were school children playing in the playground and more than a dozen people with their readers spread over the corridors that encompassed the ground. What a contrast!
When we were done with the session, he asked me whether I would come the next day. I really did not know. I did want to and the same time confused whehter I would help him at all or waste his hours of study.
I dont know. Tomorrow is another day.
posted by Incognito at 11:29 PM
3 Comments:
retro...yaaru suresh kumar...this sounds interesting..gotta tell my 'trust' members..btw...visit my blog once in a while u assssssss......
Did you go? It sounds... like something I would not mind doing, though I think I would be uncomfortable. Why are people uncomfortable around the differently abled?
Pristy : Will tell u in detail when I meet ya.
Camphor : No I did not. Just dint. It was nice reading to him.
But I somehow felt pointless, wanted to know why he was doing literature. Cos for one thing, he seemed to have done his schooling in Tamil medium and he was finding it really difficult to comprehend lot of even simple words.
Though I am in no position to question all that..
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