IMAGINE a world that is monotone and pitch black. You have to find your way through a medley of unfamiliar sounds. Your dreams are simply dark, auditory structures bearing no shape or form. Just a few seconds into this world and our imagination founders. But Rauf lives it.
Day in and day out, his life starts where our imagination fails. Blindness is only a routine in Rauf’s visually dark life, made vibrant by his achievements.
Being born with a condition called, congenital cataract does not bother him. “I don’t think about what I don’t have and try to work on the faculties I have,” says the 34-year-old Abdul Rauf. He usually looks cheerful, which is more than can be said of many people born with sight. His friends never find him depressed about such things as not having a six-digit job or not being able to travel around in a four-wheeler. Blindness is not used as an excuse to lash out at fate with cynicism.
Rather, on any given holiday from work, Rauf can be caught in one of his invariably jubilant moods, listening to friends and discussing their problems. “There’s nothing to be depressed about. In fact, it gives me a lot of comfort to know that friends come to me for emotional strength. I have worked hard all my life to show people how a blind man can do just as well as them. Depression over my physical inability has never found ground in my life,” articulates Rauf in highly academic English.
It is only when sometimes people call him, Hafiz sahib that Rauf loses his composure. That one term is enough to invalidate all the hours put in by him to as well, and even better, than people with no visual disability. “I try not to get angry though. We are ignorant here about the blind and think that they are best suited to spending their lives in madarassahs learning the Quran by rote. They assume that if you are blind, you can’t do anything else. That’s sheer ignorance!” reasons Rauf.
If brilliance and excellence have been the high points in Rauf’s career, his life has received a few jolts on the emotional side. Being unable to marry the girl of his choice was one of them. He admits, on the same note of buoyancy, ‘no affair has reached its end’. “The elder generation does not understand that I am a human being capable of falling in love. Parents of that girl felt that I would not be able to look after their daughter. Even if I understand their fears, I can’t accept them,” says Rauf.
It mattered not to them that Rauf was earning enough to bring up a family in reasonable comfort; that he had made history in Pakistan by becoming the first blind person to excel academically on an open merit; that he is the only lecturer at MAO College in Lahore who gets the undivided attention of a class of 150 English students, and the first one in Pakistan to start Urdu into English translation of Maulana Shibli Nomani’s Seerat-un-Nabi’s seven volumes. “I’ve had marriage proposals of blind girls. I realized such a marriage would have more difficulties. For the sake of children, at least one of us should be able to see.”
Rauf is the youngest of his five brothers and five sisters. Making light of his huge family Rauf says: “My fathers always believed in equality. Well, till the last reports came in, we were said to be 10.”
Abdul Subhan was a man with exceptional qualities. Before Partition he worked for the revenue department and in acknowledgement for his excellent performance at work. Instead of shunting off Rauf and his two other visually disabled sons to a nearby mosque in Jhang, he put in all his energy to educating them.
“My father was a truly enlightened man. He did not regard blindness as a curse and took it as a trial from God. Any other person in his place would not have been able to cope with the responsibility of a huge family including three blind sons. He took it as a challenge.”
Abdul Subhan sent his youngest son, Rauf to a school attended by the elite of the Jhang area. He had learnt from experience of his other two sons that sending visually impaired children to special schools prevented them from many things. For one thing, by closeting them into the special category was akin to constantly reminding them of their physical disability.
Rauf was sent to the Sacred Heart School run by the missionaries from Malta. He stood first in every class, took part in every school activity, played flute, was a good gymnast and the best debater. “The nuns were very sensitive and nice to me. I had a wonderful time at school,” mused Rauf.
After school he would come home to start the second phase of his day. “My mother died when I was in the fourth grade. That left my father to pay even more attention to us. He would dictate all my course books, which I would write in Braille. There was no play after school. I had to work extra hours to get good results at school.”
Abdul Rauf made history by standing third in Arts in Matriculation in the entire Board. He joined Government College, Jhang, and two years later again stood first. This time it was the Intermediate examinations in which Rauf stood first in the Punjab from the Faisalabad Board. After graduation, he applied to the Government College, in Lahore, in the English Department on open merit. “I was third on the list.” Life at the historic Government College had many ups for Rauf. He was selected as the English best debater for 1993, became editor of the English section of the hostel magazine, Patras, wrote for the college gazette and also started writing for its famous magazine, The Ravi.
Rauf’s career graph was steadily following a high scale. He began to write humorous poetry and also started writing for the education page of The Pakistan Times. Meanwhile, a publishing house decided to publish Abdul Rauf’s selection of English speeches. Called, A Handbook of English Speeches, the book contained Rauf’s speeches he had given as a debater.
Soon he faced a major disappointment when he was told that physically disabled people could not sit for the Federal Public Service Commission exams. “I was interested in international relations and knew I could be selected among the first 10 spots. But government policies were too bigoted to allow a blind man into the foreign service. That’s one thing I can’t forget because I desperately wanted it. Had I not shown that physical constraint could not be used as an excuse to remain on the fringe of life?” Yes, he had, but not enough to overcome bigotry.
Before joining as a lecturer at MAO College in 1996, his byline would appear regularly in a national daily, “I had applied on open merit and didn’t demand to be selected on a quota basis,” claims Rauf. He has translated many Urdu books into English and hopes to continue doing that till he is given a chance to go abroad for a doctorate. “I have already completed four volumes of Shibli Nomani’s Seerat-un-Nabi.”
Whether Abdul Rauf is given a scholarship to study abroad or not, his lifetime courage in moving upstream is in itself a classic case of challenging, provoking and outrivaling the internal voice of pessimism. That is why our visual colours look dull compared to Rauf’s pitch black world.
IMAGINE a world that is monotone and pitch black. You have to find your way through a medley of unfamiliar sounds. Your dreams are simply dark, auditory structures bearing no shape or form. Just a few seconds into this world and our imagination founders. But Rauf lives it.
