R Perumalswamy was the second of five children in his family. When he turned 10, his vision started to fail. “This changed everything. I used to get severe headache and by the time I was 14, I could no longer see the black board in my class.”
The 63 year old dropped out of school when he was studying in class IX. “I was diagnosed with cataract. My father worked in a textile mill and we couldn’t afford an eye surgery.”
Perumalswamy then spent a few years at home trying to learn new skills to deal with life without eyesight. “By the time I was 20, I learnt to weave wires for chairs from an uncle. This landed me a job at a restaurant in Ooty.
Perumalswamy underwent a free eye surgery at Aravind Eye Hospital in 1998. “I got 90 percent of my vision back and took up a job as a watchman in a private firm. I returned my ID card which identified me as blind, only to get it back after five years as my eye sight deteriorated again. Now my visibility is 25 percent and I can see things that are close to me,” he says.
After the surgery, Perumalswamy joined The National Federation of the Blind, an association for the visually challenged in the city. “There, I learnt about Louis Braille. Had I known about Braille in my childhood, my life would have been different.”
- One day, a guest gifted me a US dollar coin and that was the start of my collection. I have more than 1000 coins from 30 countries including Bangladesh Canada, Russia, Dubai, Sri Lanka and Singapore. More than 500 of those are commemorative coins. I bought books that had information about coins and their series. It has helped me understand world history. My favourite in my 25-year-old collection is the ₹2 Braille coin issued by India in 2009, to commemorate the 200 th birth anniversary of Louis Braille. It has his name embossed on it. I own 150 of the Braille coins. I also have 10 paise coins released from 1988 to 1998. I have exhibited my collection in more than 30 schools since 2014.
He was so impressed with Louis Braille’s contribution to society that he started to include Braille tools to his collection. Now he has writing boards, stylus, geometry sets, books, watches, chess boards and other devices like voice recorders and support canes for the visually challenged. “The chess board has holes in each cell to insert the pawns,” he explains. He also owns five Braille watches. “The dial can be opened and we feel the needle with our fingers for the time. The hours are marked in Braille.”
Perumalswamy’s mission is to spread awareness about Braille. “Braille is not given enough importance and it is difficult to find teachers to teach it. Many families stop sending their visually challenged kids to school . Educating and empowering them is the right thing to do.”
