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When Anil Mudgal, who runs Arushi, an NGO in Bhopal, first showed me a railway reservation requisition slip for West Central Railway, I was a tad flummoxed as I couldn’t spot anything outstanding. The form had instructions printed in English and Hindi on one side and tit-bits on Braille on the flip side. Strange, I thought. Until he explained, that is.

“How many times have you misjudged a person just because he hasn’t returned your pleasantries?” Anil asked me. “Well, there is no question of an erroneous judgement if I know the person in question. If I know him well, I usually infer that he might be too perturbed to return my greetings,” I countered. “That’s precisely it. You know the person too well to form an instant opinion. Most of us are obstinately opinionated, because more often than not, we do not know someone and are hence unable to appreciate his feelings,” Mudgal said.

Linking this to the rationale behind printing information about Braille on the reservation slip, an endeavour successfully initiated by Arushi, he said that awareness was the key to better understanding and appreciation of a special condition. He thought of sensitising people about the blind through the railways. The West Central Railway previously had forms printed in English and Hindi on either side. Arushi officials impressed upon the railway authorities the futility of printing the form in two languages on both sides. Why not print both on the same side to save printing costs, they argued. As the logic gained acceptance, Arushi got the other side of the form printed with info on the Braille script.

Their reasoning was simple. Fiddling with the form while standing in the queue, even if some people turned it over and read the nuggets on how those less fortunate make an effort to try and be one of us, they would know how to deal with them. Most passengers take two forms, hand over one at the ticket counter and take the other home. If some of them care to read about Braille later or tell others about it, the purpose is doubly served, Arushi officials reasoned.

A small beginning, yes, but it serves a greater purpose. Not a question of the blind alone, it is more a matter of giving due regard to every fellow human being. Invidious acrimonies the world over often stem from our not knowing, or not making an effort to know, others. The thin line demarcating civility and barbarity is governed by the art of understanding people. Believe me, a little effort in this direction could make the world a better place to live in.