Reaching Out

Thirty-six year old Kedar Indurkar suffers from cerebral palsy but that has been no deterrent in his pursuit to bring joy into the lives of other differently-abled persons like him. Kedar has been converting popular books into Braille for the benefit of the visually-impaired.

In his recent achievement, Kedar converted the Marathi book, "Lapavlelya Kacha", into Braille. "Lapavlelya Kacha" has been authored by renowned music composer Dr Salil Kulkarni and he himself released the Braille version.

Kedar has converted 15 books into Braille so that the "visually-impaired friends can read them". His chartered accountant father and doctor mother introduced Kedar, when he was a child, to computer games. Kedar soon developed an interest in computers and, after learning typing, he typed out his mother's pathology notes. He uses only three fingers of his right hand to type.

Among the books that Kedar has converted into Braille are Sudha Murthy's "Wise and otherwise", "How I taught my grandmother and other stories", "Old man and his God", "Magic drum" and "Sukeshini".

Kedar has won a number of awards for his achievements including the national award in the self employed - cerebral palsy category. He has also been conferred the Shahu Modak Prathisthan award and felicitated by Sudha Murthy and Lions Club of Pune Elite.

Kedar has passed the 10th grade from National Open School, Delhi board, and has also done a course on computer fundamentals and web page designing. He has also learnt a little bit of Indian classical music, Kedar says in his web site.