I sincerely wish it wasn't true. My fingers fail me to write an obituary for a person who had low vision but who was highly visionary. He was an intellectual with serious ambition to work in favour of blind students without making much noise. He remained on several committees formed by University of Delhi and was a major force in changing the mindset of the University authorities towards the blind.
Despite significant vision loss, he could read print. Hence it will be erroneous to think that he built an audio book library for himself. He took help from his students in the university to record books in general interest and he had a great collection of professionally recorded books. He donated his entire audio book library to the DU braill library. Meeting him used to be a great experience. Memories of various rendezvous with him are still vivid in my mind. With me, he always was in an infotaining mood. He was a classicist and could recite large chunks of poetry from memory. I got to know this when once I complained to him, "teaching poetry without Braille is impossible." He said, "why not memorize them." Then he started reciting and I could not help marveling at his capacity to memorize and remember things at such an old age. I didn't realize for a long time that he was a fan of Cricket. Significantly dejected and wanting to talk to someone nice, I called him up one evening. After 40 minutes of talk he perhaps had enough of it and exclaimed, "Tara, Why are you not listening to the match?" I asked him what was there in it and that we were anyway going to lose the ask being more than 320 and India already 5 wickets down for less than 70 runs. He assured that India was to win that match. That was the match that made Md. kaif and Youvraj Singh heroes in the world of cricket. Once he asked me for my biographical details for a book he was about to publish in which the lives of some great blind people were to be described. I declined stating that I was neither great and nor I was going to be. My reasoning to him that greatness leads to isolation, was so untrue in the context of his life. It is agonizing to believe that the great soul has left us. Prof. Sena may not physically be with us anymore, he will live with his books, his memories and his inspirational lectures. His soul hes left us, he has left us a spirit to live with, the spirit of hardwork and perseverance to be successful despite obstacles. With a very heavy heart I bid farewell to the great man. Long live Prof. Sena. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Col. Pradeep Kapoor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2006 12:53 AM Subject: [AI] Bad News > Dear Friends, > This mail is to inform you of the sad demise of Prof Vinod > Sena, at New Delhi on 10 Dec 06. He succumbed to a cardiac arrest. > Prof Sena was visually challenged himself, while working > for the blind on issues he felt were important. He ran an NGO - > Shruti, which focusses on aspects affecting access to higher education > for the Print disabled. He helped to highlight issues like books for > the blind & corresponding benefits from modifications to the Copyright > laws. He was instrumental in establishing the first computer facility > for the Blind at Delhi University. He had also established a web site > for the Blind. Recently, on 2 Dec, he had been honoured with the > Hellen Keller award. > with best wishes > yours sincerely > Col P Kapoor > General Secy. > > To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with the subject unsubscribe. > > To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, > please visit the list home page at > http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
