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Hi, my name is George Abraham, and welcome to this episode of Eyeway Conversations. My guest today is Subramani. He is a journalist, an author, a blogger and a father. Hi, Subramani, Welcome to the show!
Thank you, George. Thank you very much. And thanks for having me here.
So you have been working as a journalist for several years now. And this is rather unusual for a blind or a visually impaired person. What's the story behind this?
I wasn't born blind. I should say that I could see until I was about 16. And as a child, I had this nose for news. As we used to say, in our line of work, where, you know, we kind of get interested in what's being discussed on television, because those days, as you know, there's just one television channel in India, and we used to watch that. And I used to be the only guy at home, we used to sort of sit down and watch the news. In my school days, I remember, you know, there used to be this assembly. My teacher used to read out the news headlines. That day when I went to school, there was this headline declaring that, you know, a prominent devotional singer, who's also my mother's favorite had passed away. So those days, there was no news as such.
So who was this devotional singer who passed away?
Bangalore A.R. Ramani Ammal.
Okay.
Ramani Ammal is a very prominent voice in Tamil.
Right.
She sang the Lord Murugan songs, you know. Those are her famous songs. My mother always used to play them, you know, at home. So, at the morning assembly news, my teacher read this news. And then I ran home in the afternoon, and then told my mother and took a little pleasure out of the distress and the sadness she felt because that told me that I was the first person to give her the news. So, those were my first forays, rather unconsciously, into news. By 15, I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa. And by the time I entered college as a 17-year-old, I was completely blind. And it was a tough transition because, you know, we were out and about asking for information who to approach for help, or how does one move around with blindness. So many questions, so many searches, so many ways in which we were desperately searching for answers. We got some answers, I guess that's why I'm here. But a lot of other questions were unanswered. You know, an emotional adjustment is one, psychologically and emotionally how you get adjusted to this idea that no, you can no longer see the world. And you know, you have to sort of deal with it in a practical sense, you should have the strength to take it in your chin and just move on. And then in 1994, by the time I finished my Bachelor's and getting into Master's, I was sitting with my college mates and we were having a kind of talk about what was going to be in our future. And I said, you know, I wanted to be a journalist. And then it was met with laughter. But that stuck on with me. And when I finished my Master's in 96, I wanted to sort of do briefly -- sort of thought about the idea of Civil Services, but I realized that that wasn't somehow going to help me and then I got into journalism. It seemed like a natural thing for me. I did my postgraduate diploma in Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Chennai and then at the end of 1998, I started interning with The New Indian Express, after which I started freelancing. That's how it started. And I realized it completely -- my idea, my dream, in 2004, when Deccan Herald hired me. And I've been with them since.
So, when you were facing the interview board say at Deccan Herald, what were the kind of apprehensions you felt the newspaper had?
Yeah, it was basically about how I will take care of myself, because I'm from Chennai. And this newspaper is based in Bangalore, which means I have to work, I have to move to Bangalore to work. And that was the challenge, at least from the newspaper's perspective, the editor's perspective. Then I told them that I have people to support me more, more than anything I can support myself, it's not a problem. I won't blame the difficulties on my blindness, because that was an issue, right? When somebody is giving you a job, the first thing they think is that, oh you can't get work done out of this guy, because, you know, if he comes late, for example, he will blame it on his blindness. Or if he's doing a mistake, and if you try to correct him, he will blame it on his blindness. That was the idea -- that's how the general, the society, the mainstream looks at a blind person. So, you have to actually tell them that that's not the case. I take responsibility for everything that I do. And fortunately, you know, I was looked at favorably, probably because, you know, I had been contributing for them. I had been freelancing for them for effectively a year before I joined them. So, no questions about my quality of work or my work as such, but they wanted the assurances, because, you know, I'm going to work in their premises. I'm going to work in a city that's not familiar to me.
So, when you started your career, formal career in 2004, with Deccan Herald, did you have access to the technology that all of us use today?
Some of them, especially screen reader. I remember that there was a friend of mine who's a lawyer. I went to his house. And then he showed me how Jaws worked. This is this was in 99-2000. Yeah (George Abraham). And then I thought, Oh, wow, what a technology! You know, it took some time for me to first work and earn enough to buy a personal computer of my own. I bought a Celeron. I got it for monthly installments. I paid for it. And one of the assignments that I did, it wasn't magnificently wonderful pay, but it paid enough -- the World Cup report I did for All India Radio which is when I met you.
Oh, you're talking about the World Cup for the Blind.
Yeah, the World Cup. Sorry. Yeah, I should have said that. Yeah, the World Cup. Cricket. So, All India Radio wanted a special sort of five minute bulletin or a report on what was happening on the field. And once I had the computer, it's about a matter of time. You know, I met Srinivasalu in Bangalore, during one of my visits, and he gave me the demo version of Jaws. That was the first time I ever happened to use Jaws 2000.
Right.
Early 2003. And that changed my life. I should say that once I started using it, I knew I knew pretty well that, you know, it will change my life. And it did. It did change my life.
So, what were some of the early assignments that you did for Deccan Herald?
I was doing the editing work at the at the Features Desk. Later, I moved on to the editorial desk, then also, regular technology reporting, some of the assignments I reported was the Intel Developer Conference. People like Pat Jaisingh here and some of those top level leadership used to fly down to Bangalore and then make presentations before big audiences. So, that was one of the first assignments and then later, I remember meeting Dr. Vinton Cerf. He told me about how they first put together the protocol for the internet, which is PCP IP, basically his contribution was about, you know how deaf people can communicate through telephone line. I mean, that sounded very weird when he thought about it, but he wrote the protocols that allowed the emails to happen. So, that was my very interaction. And then I had the firsthand experience and knowledge of watching some of the pioneering technology developments that are mainstream today. For example, cloud computing was taking shape at that time. And there used to be these huge data centers on which, you know, people invested a lot of money and then it became cloud. So yeah, so I mean tweets about the social media, social media is another. See, there are two three strands to this experience of mine. One is, I saw firsthand how technology transformed people with disability and especially with your ability to kind of interact and exchange ideas through social media -- that changed a lot, that gave us a voice. Secondly, of course, the economy, how it changed, and you know how democratized it became with smartphones. So, I just saw the transformations that were taking place in the society, from the vantage point of being a journalist and I had the honor and privilege of reporting some of them for my newspaper. And, of course, I also wrote a lot about disability, and disability work. But sometime during 2014, I became a rewriter, and a copy editor. This is far a deadline- oriented job, you know, when you really have to read an article, get the crux of it, and present it in a way in which it is consumable for a news reader, especially the one on digital platform. And of course, I do book reviews these days, that's become a passion of a sort for me. So, you can read my book reviews on Deccan Herald.
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You've also written a book. So, what actually prompted you to think of writing a book and what's the book about?
This is around 2010-11, when I got associated with an organization called Retina India, and this gave me an opportunity to reconnect with the world of people with blindness in a different way, especially those who had suffered gradual vision loss due to retinal conditions. What I realized was that the situation on the ground wasn't much different from 1991. A lot of people work on the ground. But the ground is too large, the ground is too vast, and sometimes unreachable, that information wasn't available to people at the time when they need it. I happened to meet people from tier-two or tier-three cities and villages and rural areas where even the most basic of information such as you know, access to education through technology, or, you know, there are there are facilities available for people with disability to go to schools, even such basic information wasn't available. And parents were basically taking wrong kinds of decisions, you know, especially not sending the kids to school, especially if the kid is a disabled kid. And a lot of people also lost hope, especially with retinitis pigmentosa, midway through their lives, they might have lost their eyesight. And they think that it's over for them effectively -- until you know, you kind of learn that, oh, there's a technology, there's something else that you can do with it, and it's possible to even get some employment. So, then I realized that, you know, there's a disconnect between the society and people who suffer blindness. So, that's when I thought I should write about what happened to me because the tendency that you know, when you look at a blind person, you think that okay, he's the same. All blind people are the same in the eyes of the society. But it's not, you know, because, you know, someone who's lost her eyes midway through his life has a different experience from someone who's born blind. So, that was a trigger for my book. And I consciously decided that I'm not going to write an autobiography. Rather, I'm going to write a memoir, which is a slice of my life, which is the aspect of my life where I transitioned from a sighted person to a blind person, and how it impacted my family and my future life. So, that was what the memoir was about and it was published by Random House India, in 2014.
What was your first book called?
Yeah, it's Lights Out: A True Story of a Man's Descent into Blindness.
You also write a blog, which is pretty active. And you also do podcasts. Now with these two mediums coming into play, and also the social media becoming more and more popular, when you place in terms of value, a book, the readership has kind of dropped? Or do you think people should kind of think of, you know, telling their story via blogs and podcasts?
The idea of writing a book was a hazy one. But I did it, I did it and I published it. And only later did I realize that the process actually needs a bit of a preparation. If you're writing a book, the first thing that a publisher asks you, unless you self-publish, and even if you self-publish, the first question that you should ask yourself, is what's called an author platform? The author platform is basically, how many email subscribers you have? How many people actually are curious about the work that you do? How many people see something that they can take away from what you're doing? And, you know, to build this is a kind of a confidence building. Because after all, at the end of the day, it's a business, when they invest a huge amount of money on you, these publishers actually look for, you know, marketing opportunities, and, you know, they want a lot of this contribution to come from you. Because, you know, you're writing better than the publishers and you know, where or how to target the book, and get the audience. And they assume that you already have the audience, most of them ask for it. So, social media is the best way to build your platform. Okay, you can loosely build it around Facebook, Twitter. But the more concrete ways of doing it is to create content for yourself, and prompt people to ask for the content to be sent to them. They do that by submitting their emails. So, with their consent, you send your content to them. And they appreciate it. And you give them an option to unsubscribe, if they are not happy with it. So, you know, that's the way you build the platform. So imagine, I forgot the name of the gentleman who did it -- it is somebody in New York, who was a counselor, basically a children's counselor, or one of those counselors. And he wrote a book, and then he had so much contacts, so many people benefiting from his work, that when he published an E-copy of his book, 50,000 people bought it, you know, because they knew him because they knew his work, because they trusted him, they bought his book. And the Fifty Shades of Grey, E. L. James' book, that first came as a self-published book or a blog or something like that. And then it metamorphed into a book. And most of the books are like that, you know, they they start as a blog idea. And then they slowly metamorph into a book. So, yeah, it's a process. And that's why I actively engage myself with, you know, my potential audience. And I talk about my book, my published book, and not so much about man published book, because it kind of metamorphs itself into something else every year -- haha-- I really have to find out a way to sort catch hold of it and put it on paper so that people can read it. So, yeah, so that's how and that's why i engage -- so to answer your question, it's basically, you know, the social media actually feeds into your creative process and not something that hinders it.
In recent times, you've also been engaging with the newer platforms like Clubhouse and so on. So, tell us a little bit about Clubhouse and what you actually do.
A very exciting, very, very exciting aspect of my life that you ask --Thank you for that question because Clubhouse is one app, where I should say that the last two months that I've got involved with Clubhouse, it's like a journey of self discovery. You discover aspects of yourself that you're not earlier aware of. One of that is basically you know, how you basically crystallize your interests. You know, what are you interested in?
Right.
So, when I got in there, I realized that I have a lot to offer. As a spiritual seeker, as somebody who has had a spiritual experience. And that's when you know, it all ties in, you know, my blindness, my journey as a journalist, and then, you know, whatever else that has happened in my personal life, everything ties into something. And then I realize that I can talk for authentically about manifestation. Because manifestation is all that we do in our lives, you know, we manifest every minute of our life. And it's not only positive, but sometimes we manifest our fears.
Right.
--without knowing we're doing it, unwittingly. And, you know, so I talk about that. So Clubhouse is this app where you know, you can create a virtual room, or you can participate in a virtual room and then talk to like-minded people about subjects that you like. You know, I keep telling people that don't use Clubhouse for entertainment, if you're not from the entertainment industry, that is, because it's a waste of time, you're going to sit there and talk about Bollywood movies and have a fun time. I mean, you can do that, sure. It's your choice, nobody's going to stop you. But if you want more rewarding experiences out of it, it's better that you engage with people, engage with minds. See, what what Clubhouse has done now is that you can talk to somebody in Los Angeles. And, you know, you may be different time zones, but it's okay, when you can get up in the middle of the night, or if the topic is good enough, the other person will get up in the middle of their night, and then they sit, and then you discuss, you know, aspects of life or aspects of your professional career that is of relevance to both of you. And, you know, people who listen to it or people who contribute to it also benefit in the process. So, I should say that spiritual oratory, and spiritual journey is something that I've discovered on Clubhouse, I mean, that kind of consolidated as an authentic experience. Secondly, of course, Clubhouse has given me an opportunity to meet a lot of wonderful people, it's a good platform to network. And, you know, where you can, sort of either professionally or otherwise, you can seek expertise from other people, or you can give your expertise to somebody, and you can have business collaborations and what not. So, that's another use of Clubhouse. And the third, and the most important point is that, you know, in these days of, you know, self isolation, stay-at-home situation, where human contacts have broken, Clubhouse has provided a wonderful opportunity to reconnect to the world in a very, very different and an exciting way. So, these are the three takeaways for me from Clubhouse. And I must say that I'm enjoying the opportunity.
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Lastly, let me kind of come back to your disability. You've been kind of living with your eye condition since 1991 or so. And it's nearly 30 years. So, how do you look at disability in your life? Is it something that has played a role in your life? Has been retarding your progress? Has it come in the way of your aspirations? Or you managed to kind of circumvent all that and continue living your dreams?
Thank you for the question. Again, it's a fantastic question. I look at my disability an identity. I don't look at it as a limitation or something that has made me inferior or superior to somebody. No, it has become a part and parcel of my identity. The one that I don't really feel embarrassed talking about. Again, that's one thing that as I speak more from a spiritual perspective, I realize that we all have taken the form that we have taken to experience our own unique, you know, stories and then convey it an authentic and truthful way. So I don't really see that as a disability. I see it as an identity and secondly, I encourage people to go for a cure -- but if you have to go for a cure for a disease that's posed a lot of problem to scientists who have been sort of a researching about it for a cure for what, 25-30 years, spending hundreds and millions of dollars -- the best thing that you can do is to forget tomorrow and start living today. That's what my disability has taught me. And it also taught me that, you know, you don't have to be shy, you don't have to really consider yourself deprived of something. You can continue to experience life in a fulfilled way. Only thing is you may have to do it differently. See, I I finally tell my team members that you know, who's going to realize that tomorrow morning, they are reading the news headlines of a news copy edited by a blind person, they won't even know that. And if at all, there is a mistake, you can give the excuse that you a blind person in the team. I mean, I say this more in a light-hearted way. But yeah, so I have the courage to say this now. And, you know, I can make a joke on myself without having to wallow in self pity. And that's because I consider what I've experienced as very unique, very authentic, and very interesting. After all, you know, if everything is perfect in life, you'll have the drabbest of lives. Right? I mean, can you read a story in which everything is no conflict, everything is fine, everybody's loving each other, nobody's bad -- I think you'll throw away the book. Only when there's a conflict, there is a trouble, there's a challenge, life becomes interesting. So, I can say with all authenticity and utter humility, that I've led a very interesting life.
That's very interesting and insightful, Subramani. Thank you so much for giving me the time and speaking to us. I wish you all the very best.
Thank you for all the work that you're doing for the community. And thank you for having me here.
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