Hassan, May 9: H.J.Bhargav is a fine example for the inspiring adage ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going’.
Passing the Karnataka Administrative Service exam is the vision that this SSLC passout has set for himself. He looks capable of achieving this and more and his tale of determination tells why.
Bhargav saw the world through his eyes only for the first five years of his life. He lost the organs of vision by a quirk of fate. But then, he perfected seeing the world with his ‘mental eyes’. With 91 per cent marks in class X, he has proved he has endowed himself better than those with vision.
Malaria struck Bhargav’s twin brother Raghav when they were five years old. He was treated at a local hospital for the disease. Soon, Bhargav too was affected by malaria. The doctor who treated Raghav prescribed the same medicines for Bhargav. While the medicines had a curative effect on the former, they had disastrous side-effects on Bhargav.
In four days, there were blisters all over his body, he lost his vision and all his teeth a little later.
He suffered from the Steven Johnson syndrome that affects one in a lakh people, in which the affected lose moisture content in the eyes. Doctors told him that there was no treatment for the syndrome. His father Jayaram H K is a lecturer at the pre-university college in Hagare, while his mother Nagarathna is a crafts teacher at the government school in Kattaya. While Raghav went to a normal school, Bhargav studied class I to VII in a private school for the blind in Braille script. Bhargav excelled in his studies and joined his mother’s school for class VIII.
Studying with the notes he prepared in Braille, he also relied on the lesson CDs given to him by an NGO in Mysore. His scope of interest extended to quiz contests, pick-and-speak competitions and mono-acting. He did not have to study maths and science as blind students are allowed to take economics and sociology instead. Bhargav and his mother will now shift to Mysore, so that he can study at the JSS Polytechnic for the Differently Abled. She has taken special leave meant for the care of blind children.
