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Flights of fantasy
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i2eye sets the spirits of visually challenged children soaring
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Blind children gather around an aircraft to get a feel of the winged beauty at the Wings of Vision programme.
"What colour is the wind?"
"Does a stone look the way it feels?"
"Green for me is like the smell of freshly cut grass."
"I think I know what it's like to see. It's like telling the future because you know now that there will be a tree and I will know later, when I come up to it and touch it."
THESE PERSISTENT questions and speculations coming from visually challenged children (recorded on a website) offer but a small chink that lets us peep into their world, and hazily begin to comprehend their lives.
So when a city journalist, who had been spending time with sightless kids, realised that his young friends only knew of aeroplanes as "things that fly with the birds in the sky", he decided he must let them have a flying experience.
And so started i2eye, an informal group of friends — journalist Anantha Krishnan M. with his "aviation contacts", Air Vice Marshal (Retd) Ajit Lamba and Nirmal Singh Sandhu, president of the Bangalore Air Cargo Club.
What triggered their coming together was the year that marked 100 years of flight by the Wright brothers. "We talked about the centenary and decided that as the country's aviation capital we need to do something to mark the occasion, but differently. Ajit Lamba said he had an aircraft at his disposal. We thought why not fly blind kids?" says Ananth.
The whole idea was to get the children out of their schools and hostels and get them talking to people, and add some entertainment. "Quite often charity is done with such blindness. We don't really see what's happening." And that's how the name of the organisation too took shape with `i' being the individual effort made for the blind children. And Wings of Vision is the name the programme took.
The first flight took off on January 7, 2004, at the Indian Institute of Science airstrip. Businessmen lent their microlites loaded with expensive aviation fuel; institutions gave them space, friends pitched in with snacks for children. Since then, they have flown eight kids. This January they flew two underprivileged children from Bangalore's slums. And with this, they want to extend the programme to kids who are not blind too.
Every time a child flew, his or her friends came along to share the experience. They visited hangars, touched and felt the huge aircraft, heard them fly, spoke to the pilots and had fun being friends with a cricketer. In cricketer Venkatesh Prasad they found enormous voluntary moral support. Every time i2eye took the kids out, Prasad was there to hang around with them and chat them up. Ghazal singer Ram Nagaraj pitched in with his melodies to keep them entertained.
"We were keen on running the programme without touching money. We did not want to form a trust because with money comes problems," says Ananth. While money may bring its problems, no money also meant the process slowed down.
They are looking for sponsors on a need basis. When they fly a child, they want someone to buy fuel for the aircraft owner. For example, for around 15 minutes of flying, fuel worth nearly Rs. 500 is needed. Moreover, the group is picked up and dropped in a vehicle that needs to be arranged. The team is also talking to insurance companies for group insurances when they take the kids out to fly.
Each child is flown individually in a two-seater craft, where he gets to interact in air with the pilot. "It's amazing to see the transformation they go through once they have flown," beams Ananth. The spin-off is that the experience is a great confidence-builder, and kids carry back happy tales to tell their friends.
Now i2eye plans to bring children from the villages, give them a day's tour of Bangalore and round off their outing with a flight of fancy. Along with that, there are plans to co-ordinate the fulfilling of little children's little dreams — maybe of a clean uniform, a textbook or a blanket, maybe the desire for a pencil with a scented eraser on it, or for a red sketch pen. Or simply get a doctor to take a look at an aching tooth. "We want people and celebrities to get involved and spend time with the children. But not people seeking publicity. We have no office, telephone or letterhead. It functions from the minds of individuals."
If you wish to join the effort or to know more, you can email i2eyeindia@indiatimes.com.
B.K.
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