On the wings of a wish
"I can cook Punjabi, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Thai food. I can make 50 different kinds of mocktails, and 30 kinds of snacks. Now I want to learn to make bakery products. I want to open a chain of restaurants - one of them in Hyderabad. I want to do my MBA from Symbiosis, Pune..."
"I can", not "I can't"! That's Akanksha - full of life and hope and brimming with plans for her future. She went through a bad patch in 2001, when she learnt that her poor vision was due to retinal degeneration, which was an incurable condition. But she soon bounced back. "Now I am normal, just like you," she declared on a recent visit to LVPEI in November 2005. Of course, a very strong and unwavering family support also helped Akanksha to pick up the threads of her life again. She lives with her parents and two older brothers and cheerfully admits that her parents spoil her. She holds a driver's license and used to drive till her mother's constant worrying made her stop. But she intends to resume driving, "That's the first thing I am going to do when I go back." She has just received the best news in years at LVPEI, she says, that she will not go blind.
Akanksha had two operations for her squint when she was a child. By the time she was 10, reading became a problem. Repeated rounds of doctors did not help improve her vision, but supportive teachers and friends never let her feel she was any different. When she came to LVPEI in May 2001, she was 18 and desperately hoping that her problems would be solved. She thought some special spectacles or surgery would finally enable her to read normally so that she could pursue her B Com.
When told that her condition was beyond treatment and spectacles wouldn't help, Akanksha broke down. But she recovered and attributes a large part of it to the counseling received at the P R K Prasad Centre for Rehabilitation of Blind and Visually Impaired. It made a big difference in her outlook towards life and now she is a confident young woman, articulate and expressive, with a very infectious enthusiasm and sense of fun. She was prescribed a 6x stand magnifier in 2001, which helped her read her textbooks. Her vision then was 6/60 in the better eye with glasses, so she was able to read fine newsprint. A good student, she has completed her B Com.
An ace athlete, Akanksha has also learnt dance, and takes in all the latest movies and television programs. The 6x stand magnifier did not help her read fine print any more as her vision has deteriorated, so she was advised to use a 12.5x stand magnifier when she came in 2005. Raring to go, she wants to leave home and study further at some reputed institute. "I am not going to be in this city long," she declares to her dad. She wants to learn the software for the visually impaired (Magic, Jaws, and Kurweil), to surf the Internet, and do so many other things, "I am going to read everything!" She has also been advised to use a telescope if she feels the need for it.
When requested to have her picture taken, she worried whether she was looking all right, and whether she was wearing the right color! Just your average young girl of today!
