How the blind are following their nose to a better future
Sharmila Ganesan Ram| TNN | Updated: Mar 21, 2017, 06.54 AM IST http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/how-the-blind-are-following-their-nose-to-a-better-future/articleshow/57743822.cms Inside an odourless laboratory called 'Personal Care'-where countertops boast deodorants, rose petals and cloves-Arun Domal and Anantha Bhoje sniff the damp end of astrip of paper sprawyed with a fine French mist. The aroma of rose hits first but their freshly-certified noses are trying to excavate the subtler "notes": Does it smell like petal or stem, fresh or stale, dry or wet, clinical or synthetic? To plunge deep however, 28-year-old Domal and 30-year-old Bhoje don't close their eyes like the young college students who use this lab do. The duo's lack of sight is a gift in this third floor room in Mulund's VG Vaze College, where the scent of opportunity had lured them last year. In January 2016, after smelling a few scented jasmine and peppermint tissues correctly, Domal quit his job as an automobile showroom salesman while Bhoje took a break from her duties as committee member of Blind Person's Association (BPA) to join the College of Fragrance for the Visually Impaired or COFVI-the only non-profit initiative in the country that annually grooms up to 10 visually-impaired adults for jobs in India's fast-growing cosmetics industry. Today, a year later, even as Domal has landed a job at a fragrance MNC and Bhoje is waiting for a placement, the course's inevitable side-effects become apparent. Bhoje, who used to dab on a weak deoderant, has now switched to a musky vanilla-and-coconut body splash while Domal sniffs vegetables and fruits before buying them. "My friends consult me on deo brands," says Domal proudly and each time he passes a gutter these days, his mind tends to pick the word 'Creyslic'--industry parlance for 'putrid'. Launched in 2012, COFVI was the brainchild of a British fragrance firm that wanted to groom the visually-impaired in Mumbai for vacancies in its Dubai branch. "Our survey of 250 candidates showed that the visually-impaired were more in tune with smells, as they were focused, undistracted and unbiased," says Sheetal Desai, managing director of the firm. But after stumbling on challenges in securing work visas for the disabled, Desai's firm allowed her to invest locally in an independent social initiative that would train visually-challenged students for jobs in India. This trail led Desai to Renuka Thergaonkar, head of the cosmetology and perfumery department at VG Vaze College, who jumped at the idea of designing the course. "When it comes to evaluating fragrances," says Thergaonkar, "it is the fully-sighted who are handicapped by biases that come from seeing colour or packaging." As most of the candidates were under-privileged adults -some of whom had worked as train hawkers, one of the challenges was introducing them to unfamiliar smells like strawberries and rosemary.Besides, years of disability and poverty had shredded their self-confidence, says Thergaonkar who learnt to simply chat with each new batch initially to ferret out their personalities. Later, she gets students to taste fruits, chocolates and pizzas, hands them a Braille book on perfumery penned by her and uses JAWS, a voice software, to help them ingest adjectives such as 'fruity' and 'citrusy'. So far, COFVI-funded by the British fragrance house and running thrice a week inside VG Vaze college's cosmetology lab-has trained and placed nearly 25 students as fragrance evaluators and quality control executives in fragrance firms in Mumbai, Pune and Raigad. Desai ran into apprehensions initially. "Some firms worried about providing a 'support system' not knowing that the visually-impaired tend to be quite independent," says Desai, citing Chanchal, the COFVI recruit who works in her firm and is "loyal, efficient and not prone to bunking". Qualities, that coupled with "an excellent smell memory, make them precious. For past beneficiaries such as Allauddin Shaikh-to whom forests now smell like groundnuts-life has changed in unexpected ways. "I have a debit card and a credit card," says 47-year-old Shaikh, who used to travel from Wangni to Chembur to work at a PCO and hawk cutlery on trains on his way back home before he started working in a fragrance firm in Mulund three years ago. Today, in an air-conditioned office, he works half as long as he used to in those sweaty 14-hour-long days of menial livelihood and, at Rs 20,000 per month, earns twice as much. "I feel like I'm part of the mainstream," says Shaikh, whose visually-challenged wife no longer seeks out charity to settle the bills, the house rent and to fulfil their 12-year-old sighted daughter Roshani's affinity for kitchen items. For all of that, he now happily pays through the nose. Regards Mr. Sameer Latey Mumbai, India Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ 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 Disclaimer: 1. 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