Imagine a world where there is only darkness around you. Well, the only colour you know is black. In fact, you do not even know or understand the concept called 'colour' as it does not exist in your world. Well, thus is the reality of the visually impaired, the visually challenged.
Louis Braille knew such difficulties from real close quarters. This French genius was born with healthy eyes, with typical normal vision. A freak accident in his childhood ruined his eyesight, robbed him of his vision. Did he allow that misfortune to destroy his insight? No way! With perseverance, he invented the Braille script for the visually challenged, and, voila, the world became "in sight" for each person thus affected/afflicted.
Monsieur Braille's life is indeed a great insight. It teaches us how not to let difficulties and misfortunes stand in our way. In fact, we can learn from him how to use a total negativity so as to transform it into a complete positivity.
Life must have been terrible for the blind those days, in the early decades of the nineteenth century. There must have been glaring and countless superstitions about the disability. Currently, there are audio books, the voice enabled softwares. All such comfort zones were unthinkable then. Yet he never gave up. Hence he made a change not only to his own life, but in the lives of millions thus afflicted.
His life teaches us that mere sight or the loss/lack thereof is nothing much. What matters the most is the insight, the vision that enriches not only your own personal space, but generations to come! Hence this humble tribute to Louis Braille, the 'vision'ary who shows you, reveals for each and everyone, the 'in-sight' that can light up wor(l)ds!
Pratima@Remember Milton's great sonnet "On his Blindness"?
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