congratulations Ketan, keep it up.
At 11:49 AM 2/12/2007, you wrote:
>Traffic at fingertips
>
>Sriram Narayanan
>
>Mumbai, February 11, 2007
>
>Rajendra Dhanuka (35) seems pretty suave behind the wheel. The
>35-year-old valuer is piloting his Honda City on a turbid Sunday
>morning and cheekily asks
>his navigator if he is allowed to overtake.
>
>Arun Kurkute (36), his navigator, smiles affirmatively. Dhanuka
>promptly downshifts a gear and floors the accelerator, hurtling his
>mellow gold Honda City
>down Cadell Road.
>
>Meanwhile, Kurkute's slender fingers are feverishly moving on an
>embossed sheet of paper. Charting his way through a route map,
>perhaps? Not really. Kurkute
>is completely blind. And what he has on his hands is a sheet of
>landmarks and directions in Braille.
>
>And like theirs, there are 63 other cars vying for victory in the
>Blind Man's Car Rally. Each driven by the owner and navigated by a
>visually-impaired person.
>A perfect case of the blind leading the sighted.
>
>Organised by Round Table India (RTI), part of the international NGO
>Round Table International, this is the third such rally in Mumbai;
>the last one was
>held in 1994. The NGO has already built 1,100 schools at the cost of
>Rs 75 crore and has educated 6,00,000 students.
>
>"We provide primary education by building infrastructure for across
>the country and by 2008, aim to educate one million children," said
>Paresh Chaudhry,
>a member of RTI and corporate communication professional with Hindustan Lever.
>
>Flagged off at Worli seaface by Ajay Devgan, who is a goodwill
>ambassador of RTI, the route touched Five Gardens, the leafy lanes
>of Dadar and Shivaji Park
>to the grandeur that Ballard Pier and Nariman Point that is nearly
>deserted on non-working days.
>
>Dhanuka was all praise for Kurkute. "Arun quite expertly guided me
>through those tiny lanes of Dadar's Hindu Colony, which is so easy
>to lose your way in,"
>he said. "I like his confidence and the world they live in."
>
>However, the pair missed one stopover and did not qualify as
>finishers. Both seemed the least perturbed, though.
>
>"It was a lot of fun and it is not often that I get to interact with
>other people," says Kurkute. Besides being a Masters in Social Work,
>Kurkute is also
>doing a Phd on the sociology of the blind in Mumbai, has trekked in
>the Himalayas, ran in the Mumbai Marathon and plans to swim the
>English Channel soon.
>
>However, out of the 63 participants, only 19 finished. Just to give
>you an idea of how arduous the route was. The route description in
>Braille very smartly
>avoided mentioning important landmarks. Instead, all the clues
>revealed were tiny, inconsequential places like beauty parlours,
>travel agencies and small
>signboards.
>
>Winner of the rally, Zarin Havewala, is a teacher.
>
>"I think this is a great venue for normal and visually-impaired
>people to interact. My navigator Ketan Kothari was so good, we won
>the rally," he said.
>
>But while the visually-challenged impressed their keen sense of
>direction, this reporter asked Kurkute if there are any
>disabled-friendly cars in India.
>"None," came the calm but stark reply.
>
>http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1925484,000600010004.htm
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with warm regards
Mahendra Galani
msn ID [EMAIL PROTECTED] skype ID chintu3886
phone +4314943149 mobile +436769163888 +4381362988
address Herbst strasse 101.16.1 Vienna Austria Europe
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