B.L.I.N.D- BORN TO LIVE IN NEAR DARKNESS ?

Are the blind 'Born to Live in Near Darkness'? Are they repaying past sins? These are the questions addressed in B.L.I.N.D.

Of the 37 million people across the globe who are blind, over 15 million are from India. I hope this statistic will spark a discussion about the general attitude of people and governments towards the handicapped, especially in countries like India, where disabilities are looked upon as a punishment for past sins and bad karma. I hope to make people aware that blindness is often caused by neglect, poor nutrition, hygiene and other avoidable circumstances early in a child's life. Even genetic defects can be avoided with proper testing. India is home to the largest blind population in the world. What's worse, 75% of these are cases of avoidable blindness, thanks to the country's acute shortage of optometrists and donated eyes for the treatment of corneal blindness. While India needs 40,000 optometrists, it has only 8,000.

What drew me to this project was hearing stories about the issues faced by the blind in India, and around the world. Being a visual artist and filmmaker, I could sympathize with people who couldn’t see the world around them. After doing some research, my mind was blown open by the superstitions and taboos surrounding this issue, in India. The blind (and other handicapped) were often neglected because they were believed to be repaying past sins. Blind women and girls were the hardest hit.

In BLIND, we follow the life of an adolescent blind Indian girl, who is unable to achieve puberty due to malnutrition and neglect. She is treated by a philanthropic gastroenterologist, who has been working on a set of innovative Braille charts to help the visually impaired deal with issues related to Nutrition, Hygiene, IQ development and Road safety. With his help and mentorship, she gets back on the path to health, and finally becomes a woman. We go on that journey with her as we learn more about the issue plaguing the visually impaired of India.

We met four blind Indian girls from Chennai prior to the shoot, and we decided to focus the film on these four stories. Especially touching was the story of the lead character, Shweta, who had lost her sight at a young age due to not getting proper medical treatment. Her optic nerves were damaged beyond repair. She suffered from malnutrition and illness, owing to which she had not matured, at fifteen. It was crushing to imagine both what these girls had been through and how they could go on. But equally arresting was the palpable resilience of these girls. The fact that they could find ways to create meaning in their lives, after such experiences, was awe-inspiring. This is what initially drew me to this story.

I wanted to make a film that allowed audiences to feel what I felt when I first went to the Blind schools in Chennai. It was important to me that the audience not go numb, or be so torn up that they shut down and stopped listening. So the balancing between the devastation these girls had suffered and the incredible force of hope and joy that they embodied was something I grappled with a lot. The shifting tones between pathos, humor, irreverence and joy were something I strived for, trying to keep the film visceral and surprising in its emotion and arc.