The blog is inspired by an incident that happened with my father.
In the bustling city of Mumbai, Shivaji Park stands as a haven for many seeking respite from their daily routines. Yet, for some like my father, a visually impaired man, this place of solace has turned into a scene of recurring distress.For nearly half a decade, my father, who uses a walking stick to navigate, has treaded the familiar paths of Shivaji Park at 7 PM. His routine is consistent, his steps are cautious, and his needs are simple—merely to walk in peace. Unfortunately, the peace he seeks has lately been marred by a distressing series of events.
In recent months, a group of ladies at the park have begun to cast unfounded aspersions on him. With unsettling regularity, they accuse him of pretending to be blind, taunting him loudly during his walks. These accusations are not only baseless but deeply hurtful.
My father’s eyes may not bear the common signs associated with blindness, but his impairment is no less real—a fact medically certified and carried by him in the form of a ‘blind certificate’.
Despite his attempts to ignore these taunts, matters escalated to verbal altercations. The accusers went so far as to claim that my father was deliberately using his stick to harass them, a claim absurd to anyone familiar with his condition.
During one particularly harrowing incident, the situation deteriorated further when these ladies enlisted the support of some men, who threatened physical violence against him and even mobilized to create a mob. Fearing for his safety, my father did the only thing he could: he called the police and reached out to me and a friend for immediate support.
As a psychologist, I am no stranger to dealing with panic and fear, yet hearing the tremor in my father’s voice as he stood surrounded by hostility, I felt a rush of the very emotions my patients experience. I hurried to the scene, only to find that the instigators had vanished upon the police’s arrival.
The officers present did their best to investigate, but with no witnesses willing to step forward, the aggressors remained unchallenged.The questions that linger in the aftermath of such incidents are piercing.
Who were these people who felt entitled to judge and threaten a blind man?
Will they face any consequences for their actions?
And perhaps most poignantly, can a blind man not walk freely in Shivaji Park? Or have we reached a point where stray dogs are accorded more respect and safety than a human being facing challenges?