It’s not a pleasant thing to stand before the mirror. Not in April. Especially not in the sea-facing city of Chennai, where you still feel wet after meticulously drying up getting off the shower stall. Heat and humidity in this infernal city is so bad that you’ll begin to sweat the moment you get out of shower.

Standing before the mirror is a ritual for someone who isn’t blind by birth. Only now, I imagine how my face must’ve changed in the three decades since becoming blind.

Do I choke about not actually seeing the mirror?

Sometimes I find a lump in my throat thinking about small pleasures vision afforded me so many years ago, but a combination of touch and imagination compensates the inability to see.

In a way, I’m not too unhappy about the pleasure of adjusting the vermilion dot or making sure there isn’t an extra coat of talcum powder. Because I’m sure the face I might see would show a significantly older man than the energetic teenager with a thin film of a mustache.

As such, getting older isn’t my favourite musing. It holds such a terror that I sometimes find a way to distract myself from it. You might call it a pathetic attempt to escape from reality, something I’d readily admit without shame, but you won’t fault me for it because even if you’re able-bodied, I’m sure you’re not so thrilled about getting old.

The way old age frailties would complicate disability is enough to send a chil down the spine and its eventual inevitability would sober you up for days together.

Think of this: as a younger blind man, if I fall over something and sprawl on the ground face-down, I’d get up, brush off and move on. Even the worst kind of accidents that usually happen because I’m blindsided, (pun intended 😊) while walking down a usually clear pathway, I’d mostly have a scratch here or a twist there.

For the life of me, I’m unable to imagine myself as a septuagenarian swinging his white-stick to the eatery round the corner for breakfast 😓. Because I don’t trust the infrastructure in this city (or any city), which is only imagined as giant flyovers and plenty of cars but not in terms of pedestrian-friendly pavements. In fact, so many giant square tiles are (usually) missing from the pavements that you’d almost end up doing a cross between poll vault and steeple chase and would probably end up holding an awkwardly bent white stick.

Ok…I admit to be a little over-dramatic because these days you can order food from the restaurant by opening the mobile app and paying with your digital wallet. That’s precisely how I’ve been surviving for the past two years, but it’s unlikely to keep you at home round the clock, throughout the year.

Then, there’s the issue of handling an almost total loneliness. It’s easy now to be alone because you’ve people at a phone call away, either for help or for an afternoon chat…I wouldn’t like to go too far down this path because this’ll only get progressively depressing.

So what can I, or people with disability like me, can do?

First of, keep exploring technology and have them ready for deployment.

I keep reading a truckload of contents spreading fear and uncertainties about Artificial Intelligence (AI). But if you’ve a disability, you’ll only be too glad to have an invisible presence in your house that monitors your vital health parameters and alerts your physician if things were to go south. Meanwhile, a bunch of robots can cook and clean for you. I don’t think they’ll be such great intellectual company, but you know the world isn’t perfect. 🤷

Between AI and robotics, you should be able to maintain a farily decent quality of life, especially if you’re active enough to stop wasting away too early or too badly.

If you’re a caregiver of someone with a mental or developmental challenge, start putting together the funds and the technology to help them manage their lives fairly better.

A bunch of technology can hardly compensate the need for human bonding or to safeguard against criminals (which, come to think of it, can also be managed between AI or robotics). So the one thing that you as a person with disability should do is to widen your social connectivity.

Use social media to find friends and companions. Now, I’m not a big advocate of marrying late, but if that works for you then you should do it enthusiastically by fully considering challenges right from moving places to finding spaces that could be customized to support your disability.

And if you’re working or running successful businesses, start saving for old age. Technology may come with a reasonable price tag, but you still need substantial money to tailor it to your requirement. Follow developments in latest technology, especially the way they’re deployed across the globe, companies making products out of them and how or where they’re sold.

Experiment with technology and be imaginative in using them. Even if they’re not specifically applied to your challenge, see if you can do something with them to solve a problem or two. Like how people use subtitles to watch movies, although subtitles were originally used for deaf people to watch movies.

You may have family or children, but you know you can’t fully depend on them for total comfort. With technology, you’ll actually be doing them a favour by putting together the ecosystem to take care of yourself.

Yes, old age may be scary for people with disability, but let’s blend Goodbye Mr. Chips with Brave New World to create a self-dependent ecosystem.

Will it actually work?

Right now it works in parts, but no one has actually put a system together to try if it could be made entirely self-reliant.