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"God
gives me strength," says Vacha whose workstation
is surrounded by messages from Bhagwat Gita and the
Bible.
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An
adage stuck to her front door
says, 'Nothing is more difficult,
and there more precious, than to
be able to decide, and being
responsible for it.' The last five
words are her addition, underlined
for effect.
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Vacha's
sense of responsibility is keen. In 1977,
she quit her job as the Principal of the
Education Audiology and Research Society
(also known as E R Centre), a school for the
Deaf and Blind in Mumbai. "These
children needed a different approach and I
was willing to try," she says. With Rs
150 in her pocket, Vacha set up the Helen
Keller Institute in the home of a fellow
teacher. "Not many took note of a
school that had three teachers and as many
Deafblind children," says Pervin R
Mehta, 55, honarary principal of the
E R Centre. "But she never lost sight
of her objective."
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arlier,
as a 25-year-old, Vacha was licensed pilot.
Her husband, the Late Commander N Vacha, also
a founder trustee of Helen Keller, was posted
by the Navy to Patna in the 1960's, where she
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four
years learning how to fly. In 1965, a chance meeting
with a friend in Kolkata led Vacha to the Aural
School for the Deaf in the city. "In
due course, I knew that flying was not really my
calling, teaching the Deafblind was," she says.
She had barely completed a month as trainee when the
principal insisted that she teach a girl who was
born Deaf, and turned blind at 16. The experience
strengthened her will and she decided to make her
job a lifelong commitment. "The word 'enough'
does not exist in her dictionary," says
Suryakant C Dalal, the 80-year-old President of
Helen Keller Institute. Five years ago, Vacha
introduced computers for the Deafblind. "We had
only just began adapting computers for the visually
Impaired, and she was talking about the
Deafblind!" recalls Dalal. But within a year,
Vacha had deployed the Braille press at Byculla and
fitted it with computers. Other highlights included
power Brailler (they
convert normal text on a computer screen to Braille)
and Braille embossers (to
print text documents as Braille sheets).
Vacha is now raising funds to buy computers for the
Vashi branch. |
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The
Braille press prints a bi-annual newsletter,
Deafblindness in Asia, distributed in Asia, Europe
and the US. The 15 students who work here, all graduates
from the Vashi centre, also translate books and
maps into Braille. Vacha supervisors this work.
"She has no hidden agenda," says Mehta,
who was a teacher at
E R Centre when Vacha was
principal. "She just wants to do the best she
can."
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For
Vacha, each day begins with new
ideas. She wants to introduce judo
at the Vashi school. That done, she
plans to follow up on the
consolidation and expansion of the
Institute, check progress of the
five students getting ready for the
National Institute of Open Schooling
examination and, of course, continue
to change perceptions about the
Deafblind. She is a practitioner of
Reiki, an alternative healing
therapy. And she breaks into a maxim
ever so often. Her latest: "We
can't take the future in our hands.
We must move along with the
tide." |
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