Hellen Keller

Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in America. She was afflicted with severe disabilities of vision, speech and hearing. As she grew up, this little child was bewildered. Why could she not hear her father’s and mother’s voices or see them? Her condition was similar to that of a wild animal.

One day, Helen spilt water on her clothes. The clothes were soaking wet. She wondered how she could dry them. As she was an intelligent child, she decided that the heat from the fire would dry them. She stood near the fire and attempted to dry her dress. But after a while, as her dress was still wet, Helen drew still closer to the fire, and her clothes caught fire! A maid standing nearby quickly wrapped a blanket around her and extinguished the fire.

Her parents sincerely prayed to God to show them the way. Finally, their prayers were answered, and a teacher offered to train Helen. The teacher had been through several illnesses and survived them all. She started off by writing different words for different things on the child’s hand. Helen, in return, started memorising those words.

People were amazed to know how a deaf, mute and blind child could actually read and communicate.

Newspapers now started carrying stories about Helen Keller.

Helen graduated from college.

She overcame these handicaps with her extraordinary determination and strength of spirit, giving a whole new meaning to the term we use now—a specially abled person.

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In her autobiography, Helen Keller writes, “The day I could identify things by their name was, indeed, memorable... I don’t think anyone must have ever experienced so much joy.” People marvelled at her confidence and courage. Helen Keller proved that not only could the blind lead the blind but also lead those who could see.

Let us salute this great messiah of the physically challenged, the differently abled, who through her great power of insight and intuition, broke through the barriers of her disabilities. She bore witness to the teaching that we must never give up and trust the eternal power within each one of us!

*June 27 is Helen Keller’s birth anniversary

Dada J P Vaswani was a humanitarian, philosopher, educator, acclaimed writer, powerful orator, messiah of ahimsa, and non-sectarian spiritual leader.