The All Seeing Blind

The story ‘The All Seeing Blind’ is written by Abid Surti in Gujarati. It is translated into English from the Hindi translation by Anil Sood.

Loknath is a blind person. He became blind at the age of ten. One day in his dream Shankarji told him to ask for a wish in a minute. Loknath spent a minute to think and he asked nothing. When he shared this with his mother, she told him that he could have asked for a pair of eyes. Loknath replied that it would be selfish to seek happiness for himself in a world full of people living in misery.

Loknath walked to his telephone booth without a walking stick. He had his own calculation for covering distance. He helped a kid to cross the road. He reached his telephone booth. A young person came to his telephone booth to make a call. After he finished his conversation, he gave a rupee coin to Loknath. Then Loknath extended his handkerchief towards him. How could he know the young man was sweating? The coin he gave was sticky and the receiver was wet. Then a moustached man came. When he finished his conversation, he gave Loknath a twenty-rupee note. Loknath felt the crispness of the new note and returned the change. Just then he heard the familiar squeak of sandals. He chirped ‘Hellooo’ in a very amiable tone. Seeing a pretty eighteen-year-old maiden, the moustached man murmured, “A blind man with x-ray eyes!” The girl called Poonam came every day at the lunch hour. She was a personal secretary in a company.

Three days later Inspector Godbole told him about a bank robbery. Loknath asked him about the bundles of bank notes that were missing. The inspector said, “Two lakh rupees consisted of hundred-rupee notes and the balance was made up of twenty-rupee notes.” Taking out a twenty-rupee note Loknath asked him, “Could this be one of those?” The inspector opened his pocket diary and compared the serial number. He asked Loknath where he got it. Loknath gave a clue about the moustached man. He also told his height. By his manner of speaking, he guessed that he should be from Punjab.

A little later, a young man stepped out of a taxi and asked Loknath, “Are you Loknath?” Loknath nodded. “I am.” “I Know” he said with a smile, “You are Rahul.” Rahul was the boyfriend of Poonam. Rahul was mystified. Loknath’s eyes did not have vision but he could see through his other senses – smell, hearing, touch…

Then came the moustached man. He asked if the phone was really dead and if there was any other booth nearby. Loknath told him that there was another booth in the passage of a building across the road. The inspector was standing there and he nabbed him.

Poonam had an artificial foot. But she did not reveal it to her boyfriend because she had a fear of loosing the relationship. Loknath suggested her to test his love by revealing the truth. So, she told her boyfriend about her artificial foot. He asked for a day to ponder over it. The following day Rahul invited Loknath to have a lunch with them. It was a clear indication that Rahul had accepted Poonam’s love. Poonam showed Loknath his photograph in the newspaper. She read the headline aloud, “A gang of bank robbers arrested with the help of a sightless man.”

-Gnaneswara T N, Assistant Professor, GFGC, Vijayanagar, Bengaluru