Hello and welcome to this video where we delve into the world of our blind friends, seeking to understand their unique perspectives and experiences!

We all have questions and often wonder how our blind friends navigate everyday aspects of life in this ever-changing world.

How do blind individuals cook?

How do they identify colors?

How do they know what to wear?

How do they dream about the unseen?

And how do they navigate these bustling streets?

We posed these questions, and more, to some of our blind friends and they graciously responded.

Let's hear from Cornelius, Lokesh and Madhavi as they share their stories.

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My name is Cornelius Lyng Doh and I belong to a state of Meghalaya and currently I'm working as a product manager in an NGO.

Cornelius, the question that is often asked by young students that I visit is, how do blind people learn after they are born?

They can’t see! So how do they learn?

So, uh for me personally, I was born a sighted, but then due to some medical issues I became blind.

So for me personally what happens is when I was enrolled in a school, I really had no clue, you know, what the cited uh uh, you know, letters look like but how the…my teacher did was, they make me touch and feel the letters themselves.

So by touching and feeling them I will be able to picturize in my mind, like how A looks like, B looks like, you know?

And from the picture…picturization that’s there in my mind I’m able to reproduce them on a paper.

So that’s how I basically learn.

But then that’s from the sighted point of view, but for me personally, how I did my schooling was on a Braille slate, that’s called a Braille script where we have a paper and a slate and a stylus to write on.

So basically this is a brief about, you know, how I read and write.

The next question often asked is how do blind people know what they are wearing?

How do they know colors?

Or do they dream?

How can they dream about something they have not seen?

Yes, so I’ll explain to you about the dress that I’m wearing.

So basically for me, I really can’t identify colors.

So I need help from any sighted person who is next to me or, you know, who is available to help me out.

If, in case, that solution is not available, I have an online apps called ‘Be My Eye’ where I wear the dress or before wearing itself, I hang it somewhere and then I’ll just use that app to ask for volunteer’s help.

Hi.

Hello.

Yeah I just wanted to, wanted a little help uh, uh I just wanted you to tell me um uh the the color of the shirt I’m wearing I…

Can you…can you see it?

I can’t see, move a bit to the…

No am I pointing the camera in the right direction?

Uh no I think I just see a light.

Now?

Ah yeah, it’s green. It’s uh greenish Brown.

It’s greenish?

Yeah.

Okay, thank you so much.

So once the volunteer uh, you know, he is online and then I will show him the dress.

So this shirt, will it match with this pant?

So if he says ‘no this pant looks odd with this shirt’, you know, I come up with another pant or shirt and then ask for his help to match it for me.

So basically this is how I, you know, normally dress before coming to office.

So ap…and apart from this, you know, when you ask me about dreams, yes we dream, you know, as other people do.

But then, even in dreams, personally, you know, I really can’t see, even in dreams also.

Say for example, if I dream about, uh you know, normally just to tell you, I dream about driving vehicles very very much.

So even in my dreams if I have to ride a vehicle, if I have to drive a vehicle, I don’t know, it’s just that I’m holding the steerings and you know, giving horns, indicators, everything, but then without noticing that I am blind or sight, with a person with sight or not, but I’m just driving it like that.

So, just to answer, you know, we dream, yes.

Buildings are coming up, bridges are coming up, how do you go about navigating spaces?

Navigating, yes, yeah.

So, uh it’s a very pertinent questions actually.

So when I was at home itself, since I said earlier, I belong to a very rural village and out there, you know, recently in the past few few years, we have started to construct roads and, you know, many new houses come up.

So what happens is while walking in the road itself sometimes it’s very difficult, especially while walking in a known area, I tend to, you know, walk very casually without much attention to whatever is there around me.

So, in case if there are new obstacles coming up, so then, you know, I will realize that it’s not good that I should walk like this.

Instead you know, even if it un…if it is…respective of whether it’s a known place or an unknown place, we should be really attentive to the surroundings and to be very careful while walking.

And to walk, you know, independently I use a cane with me that I’m holding here with me.

So this is how I tap in the road and then, if in case it hits an obstacle, I have to, you know, avoid it by either walking to the left or to the right.

So that is one, and another thing is, say for example, if I’m in a busy street where lots of vehicles or sounds are coming from, you know, either side of the road, you know, it will disturb my flow of walking because, so to say, you know, we depend a lot on the surroundings and then accordingly make our choice whether to walk straight or walk right or left, you know, so we really need a quiet environment to walk but that’s not possible everywhere we go, you know.

So in…here in Bangalore itself is so noisy.

So with the help of the cane and also whatever possible, uh uh you know, sounds that, that come up, we, we have to adjust according to that, and then walk as per our choice, okay?

Say for example, again I’ll give you a small examples, if there’s a, you know, car in front of me, you know, with the engine running, so just by listening to that sound itself, it is, you know, before hitting itself with the skin I will come to know, ‘oh there’s something in, in front of me’.

So just by listening to the sound, you know, by moving left and right with my ear, I will come to know that distance of the, you know, the, how to say, the space of that sound, how much big is it from the left to the right.

Accordingly I’ll just move it, you know, depending on the, the sound.

I’ll walk to the side and then, uh you know, continue with, ahead with my journey, that’s it.

So, do you cook, Cornelius?

Yes, I cook.

Not so, you know, complicated dishes but then I cook my own style like having come from my Meghalaya, so I know many items from there.

You know, like rice, chicken or normal curries or I can go to the level of chicken kebab or a fish, fish fry, you know…

How do you do that…I mean how do you navigate using the gas and things like that?

So gas is all practice.

In, in the initial stage, of of course I needed help, you know, to show me how to turn on…turn it on using a lighter.

So once I know the exact location where to, you know, to put the lighter and then you know, push uh uh you know, switch it on, so that’s how I practice.

Uh after that once I come to know exactly, so with the practice so to say, in short we can say it’s all about practice.

So apart from gas what happens is, in my home I have also one, an induction which is a completely touch screen induction and what was the solution that I use is, you know, by feeling where is the button, which is completely touchscreen.

In the initial days when I bought it, you know, I took my sighted friend’s help.

You know, he comes to my house and then I ask him ‘this button is for what’?

And then once he say this button is for turning it on and off, so I bought one bindi with me.

So I stick it on just beside to that button and then write a short Braille note, you know, just keep it a P, so for pause, you know, something like that.

And also if in case it's for increasing in temperature, so there I'll just write beside it, you know, like 'inc' for increase or if it's a button for decrease, I'll just write 'dec'.

It's just for my reference.

And slowly once I am very familiar with the position of each button, uh you know, it doesn't matter whether these Braille, Braille stickers are still there or not.

So right now in my home if you come, you know, you will see a completely touch screen, you know, induction with no solutions at all.

It's all because of the practice, as I said, and it's all because of the, you know, initial solution that we found.

Could you tell us a bit about your hobbies?

Just like other people do, people like us also, you know, have various hobbies.

Say for example, I like to listen to songs, I like to play chess and I like to play cricket as well.

And also, most fascinatingly, I also learned to play guitar when I was a child.

So right now I used to go and play guitar around with my friends, you know, chilling out at home with my friends just playing guitar, singing Western songs.

You know, this is how I enjoy my life apart from my work.

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(Sound from the phone)

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Uh my name is Lokesh, I am from Karnataka.

I had around 10+ year experience uh different work in corporate sectors, like medical transcription, and now recently in EnAble India I'm also working in different teams, uh teaching and training employees with visual impairment in government sector as well as private sector.

I'm born…by birth…blindness.

And I studied 1 to 10th special school for the visually impairment person, then college and uh with sighted people.

So Lokesh, I’m going to ask you some questions that sighted people often have about blind people.

They might sound strange to you but nonetheless sighted people often feel, how do blind people know when they’re eating, what they’re eating?

Are they going to be messy because they don’t know what is kept on the plate?

Or when they’re getting out of the house, they have not seen the bus and they have not seen potholes and manholes or whatever, they’ve not seen these things, so how do they go about living their lives and doing their daily chores?

What would you say?

Yeah, the question is very good because everything comes through eyesight only.

Feels very easy to understand like that you people…

But we also same thing, but through sense we are feeling.

You people are, through sight you are seeing and feeling.

We are different, sense like through touch and other type of sense.

For example, we have certain training, like from the school itself.

We had different sort of training.

There, they taught how to lead our life independently, including home science or any other, even farming.

Both 1 to 10th we studied especially…we visually impaired people study in special school, those people are totally trained up like how people lives, non-sighted people, how they lives in their home, like that.

That atmosphere they create for visually impaired.

And they're teaching step by step through their touching sense and making to understand.

For us situations were created, through that we learned practically and also theoretically by feeling sense.

So how do special schools for blind people actually function, you know, how…how are blind people taught in a special school and what is the contribution that the school has in making a blind individual independent?

Uh basically in the special school, like how you in the small teenage time, or any 1 to 10th age time, how people will drop, like sighted people also, they will drop their child…kids to the school, right?

Like in the same way, we, special school also did the same thing for us but in the mean…meanwhile they taught without parents how you have to lead.

That time we used some assistive devices like canes and any different technology to lead our life independently.

They trained us, without parents' dependency or without anybody's dependency, at least you can lead your life like walking, going, and searching here and there what is available, how to search, how to tackle on the road and how to understand the environment while moving.

Certain tips, we have to, keenly give importance, otherwise somehow difficult to understand us.

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Madhavi, is life as a blind person different for men and women?

Uh yes, of course, it’s different for men and women because men are like, not uh like, involved in some household activities, so wherein women supposed to do all the things, so that is why it’s differs.

Are you married?

Yeah, first let me give my introduction.

I…my name is Madhavi, I’m from Andhra.

So I’m…I was born blind.

And completed my graduation and I’ve been uh working as an executive since four years at EnAble India.

And I’m married, I have a small kid too.

It’s a one year old baby I have.

And like, why it differs for men and women is, I’m a person who was brought up like a person…sighted.

So I have two siblings, one elder sister and the other, younger brother.

My sister and myself, whatever my sister used to do I used to do faster than her and there in, like my family, given, given me an opportunity to do all the works and not treated me as a visually impaired and stopped me ever.

So that is where I learned all the household works.

I can do all the household chores and I love cooking, one of my hobby.

And I love keeping my surroundings very clean and I love decor stuff and all.

So that is where I, day to day uh experience all these things, that is where I see men are different from um women.

Because my husband is also a person with vision impairment wherein he can see a bit but he never does all those things.

So I can manage taking care of the baby and do all the work at home.

Is your baby sighted or blind?

Yeah, she is sighted.

Could you share your experiences, Madhavi, of being a blind mother to a sighted baby?

Yeah, I can say it’s a very um good and great thing in my life to give a birth to a baby and she's…

I’m very happy that she is sighted also because we don’t want her to face some challenges where we faced in our life.

When it comes to, especially to the education and getting a job opportunity, that is a very big challenge I can say.

And when it comes to my experience, um I ha…I faced very big challenge in the initial days of…soon after my delivery.

Post delivery I face so many challenges because when baby is very small and I cannot hold on and I cannot, like, feed her.

For, I took some 10 days to uh habituate to all those things and my mother and others helped me a lot in that and after that I learnt on my own.

And I taken three months to make her like wear the dress and all and still I take support from others and when it comes to giving the medicine to the baby wherein I don’t want to take a lot of risk.

Sometimes if it is 1 ml I do so but it is uh more than that or any other medication I don’t take risk in such situations.

Apart from that I do everything my for…everything for my baby.

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What about your education? How has your journey been?

So when it comes to my journey of education, I studied in a school uh specifically for visually impaired and after my uh SSC, so I went to the school wherein inclusive education.

So I was only blind in the uh my intermediate and degree colleges.

Could you share certain life skills that are taught in a special school?

In special schools, we’ve been taught Braille from the day 1.

After learning Braille we will be writing our own exams independently in Braille and later on we’ll be given a scribe to write our exams.

And when it comes to geography and all, we have a like tactile wherein they will draw the maps of each country or each place and show with the touch and feel methodology.

It constitutes the Eastern portion of larger Kashmir, it is 7,742 meters high.

And when it comes to Biology, we had a very good science lab wherein we were given the opportunity to learn by touch and feel.

For example, the diagram of a kidney or diagram of a human body are being shown and we can get exposure like a sighted person.

And also when it comes to uh move around independently, the, they taught us mobility.

Wherein we used to use the cane and go around.

And any place, if the…any programs or any lectures happening, we will be taken over there.

And we'll be given the guidelines and given uh the visualization uh how it is, how the hall is arranged and all, we’ll be taking our seats on particular guidelines using our cane.

So there is this common misconception that blind people always need help, what are your views about it?

The sighted people have always a perception that blind people always require uh require the support and help from others. In my o…in my, means like, it’s not the thing because they also get uh exposure with their opportunities, what they get in their life.

And in my way, for example, if they want to go for a shopping, it doesn’t mean anyone should always help.

It is a exposure that the other person, uh I mean the other person is a visually impaired, but he or she having the good exposure on what they’ll get and what is the market uh currently is.

And they can do their own things.

And if they want to purchase any daily needs, so they can able to do on their own and also they can do better than the sighted who are not doing right now.