By: Barnali Bose ( Sr. Associate Editor, ICN-Group )
KOLKATA: Do you remember the Hindi movie Black, released way back in 2005? It was a cathartic story woven around a deaf,mute and blind Anglo-Indian girl entrapped in a silent world shrouded in darkness.It is the patient intervention of a tutor in her life that magically transforms her otherwise meaningless existence.Not only did the roles assayed by Amitabh Bachchan and Rani Mukherjee in the Sanjay leela Bhansali starrer gain acclaim but the film too was a huge commercial success both in India and overseas. The film and the actors won awards too.
The central character of the story was a cinematic potrayal of Helen Keller who had unfortunately lost her gift of sight,hearing and speech after a severe illness of possibly Scarlet Fever, when she was only 19 months of age.
As Helen grew up,though a bright child,she was totally uncontrollable.Her father,Arthur Keller decided to seek the advice of Alexander Graham Bell,the inventor of the telephone and an authority on the deaf. On his advice,they engaged Anne Sullivan from Perkins Institution as Helen’s teacher.
Today, March 3 holds significance in that on this day in the year 1887 Helen’s first encounter with her tutor Anne Sullivan had taken place. Helen was only six years old then. It was under Anne’s tutelage and her ‘touch-learning’ methods that the earlier uncouth Keller became ‘civilised’.
At first, Helen didn’t respond much.One day,quite by chance, Sullivan held Helen’s hand under a pump letting her feel the flow of water and spelled out “w-a-t-e-r” on her palm. This proved to be a turning point in her life. Anne Sullivan came to be known as Helen’s “ miracle worker”.
Helen Keller‘s first book, “ The Story of my life” was published in 1902. Later she went on to graduate with Honours from Radcliffe College in 1904. Not only was she a fundraiser for the American Foundation for the Blind but also a strong advocate for racial and gender equality as well as socialism.
Helen Keller was a living example of ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way’. She breathed her last on June 1,1968 at her home in Westport,Connecticut,USA.
