The Daily OrangeJagdish Chander adapts to life at SU as a blind student
By Darryl Slater
Posted: 11/7/02, 3:57 AM EST Section: News
He leads you through the red door labeled “Laundry Room” and down the narrow stairway. He trails you, gently gripping your jacket.
“Left,” he says as you walk down the dimly lit basement hallway. Dusty pipes snake across the ceiling. They all lead to the door with the half peeled-off, black-and-gold “03” label.
He opens the door and lets you in. There’s a nearly bare mattress lying in the living room. No TV. No couch. No lights.
“It’s a little messy,” he’d warned you earlier, “not because I’m blind, just because I’m a messy person.”
***
The phone rings.
Jagdish Chander’s ears perk as he feels his way toward his roommate’s door. His roommate, Mohan Katna, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, rolls over and picks up the receiver. He chats for a moment and looks at Chander.
“Go back to sleep,” Chander tells him, and you wonder for a moment before shaking your head.
He sits you down, and over the next hour-and-a-half, the surprise fades.
Chander, 34 — one of just two completely blind students at Syracuse University, according to the Office of Disability Services — tells you about his 27 years in darkness and how he’s come to accept it as part of his life. He tells you how, in his native India, he’s doubly stigmatized — blind, they might accept, but divorced? Never. He tells you how he arrived here at SU last August to earn a disabilities studies graduate degree. How he’s dealt with the red tape. How he’s finally started to effect some change by lobbying for a beeping device on a crosswalk near campus.
And he answers that burning question: How in the world did he know his roommate was asleep?
“He always keeps the phone in his room when he sleeps,” Chander says with a laugh, and you can’t help but shake your head again.
“Left,” he says as you walk down the dimly lit basement hallway. Dusty pipes snake across the ceiling. They all lead to the door with the half peeled-off, black-and-gold “03” label.
He opens the door and lets you in. There’s a nearly bare mattress lying in the living room. No TV. No couch. No lights.
“It’s a little messy,” he’d warned you earlier, “not because I’m blind, just because I’m a messy person.”
***
The phone rings.
Jagdish Chander’s ears perk as he feels his way toward his roommate’s door. His roommate, Mohan Katna, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, rolls over and picks up the receiver. He chats for a moment and looks at Chander.
“Go back to sleep,” Chander tells him, and you wonder for a moment before shaking your head.
He sits you down, and over the next hour-and-a-half, the surprise fades.
Chander, 34 — one of just two completely blind students at Syracuse University, according to the Office of Disability Services — tells you about his 27 years in darkness and how he’s come to accept it as part of his life. He tells you how, in his native India, he’s doubly stigmatized — blind, they might accept, but divorced? Never. He tells you how he arrived here at SU last August to earn a disabilities studies graduate degree. How he’s dealt with the red tape. How he’s finally started to effect some change by lobbying for a beeping device on a crosswalk near campus.
And he answers that burning question: How in the world did he know his roommate was asleep?
“He always keeps the phone in his room when he sleeps,” Chander says with a laugh, and you can’t help but shake your head again.
