My first experience as a Scribe

Turning to something which is not technical, this post is meant to focus on an even more important aspect: the necessity to feel responsible to help those in need. The responsibility increases further more if the need is because of the person being physically challenged.

I remember registering myself long ago on a web site as a scribe - a person meant to write an examination on behalf of someone with a challenge like blindness, disability in hands/fingers etc. However, I never got any message from them and as such never got any chance to act as scribe. Recently, I got a message forwarded to the group YFS Vikalang requesting for scribes to write the pre-final examinations of Intermediate 2nd year (equivalent to 12th Class) students studying in "Sai Junior College for the Visually Challenged" - which is what has led me to writing this post.

I opted to act as scribe for Telugu language exam as the number of people wanting to write in the regional language was less. The biggest hurdle for me is the fact that I lost touch with hand writing ever since I entered the software development field. As a preparatory step, I practiced to write some text in Telugu the night before.

The examination duration was conveyed as 3 hours spanning from 10 AM to 1 PM. I wanted to be there at the examination center well before time - contradictory to what I used to follow by arriving at the exact time or even a bit late when I wrote exams as a student! I had, hence, started at around 8 AM since the center was quite far from where I stay. It took almost 2 hours to reach and find the place as the locality was like a maze with streets going all over! I arrived at the center eventually by 3 minutes late at 10:03.

Abhinay was the student for whom I set out to write the exam. It started with me initially walking Abhinay through the entire question paper and marking the ones he would be interested in answering. As planned, I tried my best to write the answers as fast and as neat as possible. Due to not writing for so long in so many years, my fingers and hand pained a lot (the pain lasted for 2 days, by the way). However, it still felt good as it was for a good cause.

Abhinay was pretty good when compared to all the other students around. His only downside was that he was a bit slow in recalling and telling me what to write. I kept a watch on the time all the while though. When I realized around 12 noon that there was a good chance of not being able to write all the answers, my dusty brain was quick enough to recall and follow an old trick: to write answers for all the bit questions on a separate sheet and make it ready to attach it to the other sheets in case the examiner snatches the paper away. My guess turned out true. Though time was given till 1:30 PM, we could not answer all the questions. The total number of answer sheets came to a mighty 12 (twelve) - probably the highest in the entire classroom! And, we answered only 70-75% of the questions!!

I told Abhinay after coming out of the classroom that I could not write quick enough to answer all the questions. To my surprise, he honestly pointed out that it was his fault as he usually takes more time to recall and thus lags behind. I inquired if I could accompany him to his room (the hostel also appeared to be co-located) to which he negated and told me he would go by himself. It felt quite painful to leave his hand that I was holding - making the pain in my hand and fingers feel like nothing.

I wished Abhinay the best for his finals and proceeded to travel back.It was about 3 PM by the time I reached home. All in all, it was a day well spent and was wonderful experience for me as a scribe.

The intent of this post is to inspire people to come forward to support one another. At the end of this reading, even if one individual gets motivated and if that motivation leads to helping at least one other person, this post is worth it.