COIMBATORE: Sureshkumar, 32, picks up a mixie that a man brought to his repair shop in Coimbatore, identifies the problem and has it running again, all in 15 minutes. What's the big deal? Suresh is completely blind.
He runs a service centre for mixer-grinders, washing machines, refrigerators and LPG stoves all by himself on the Kavundampalayam-TVS Nagar road. When TOI visited his shop on Tuesday, Suresh was busy repairing two mixies. He deftly took the appliances apart, identifying the wires and moving parts by touch unfazed that the power was on. He listened to the appliances running to diagnose the problem.
Suresh said, "Initially people hesitated to give me their appliance for repairs, but once they saw the quality of my work they started to trust me. Now I service double-door refrigerators .. washing machines, mixer grinders, ceiling fans and gas stoves.
Suresh lost his vision after a bout of brain fever when he was barely six years old. He attended a government school for the visually impaired till Class V but dropped out after that. "I lost hope initially. Then my elder sister Revathy approached an electrical goods service at Saravanampatti in Coimbatore city more than a decade ago and requested them to allow me to learn the trade," Suresh said. That was the turning point.
Krishnamurthy, the man who owned the service centre, was patient with Suresh. He would give the youth the different parts of mixer grinders, washing machines and refrigerators and explain what they were. Over time Suresh learned to tell them apart by touch. He also proved a dab hand at coil winding.
The first appliance Suresh repaired on his own was a mixer grinder. "A pushplate was damaged and I replaced it. I can't describe what I felt when the appliance ran smoothly. It gave me a new confidence that I could live my life independently," he said. Six months ago, Suresh picked up the confidence to branch out on his own and opened ' Mari Electrical'.
A big local electrical appliances store gives him a lot of gadgets to service and repair. Suresh said he asks people to use UPI to pay him as he cannot identify the value of currency notes. He's planning to learn braille to overcome this. He now aspires to set up an institute to train visually challenged people.
"I can teach visually impaired people to repair electrical goods so that they don't have to travel on trains and buses begging for alms," he said. Suresh said he makes enough to put food on the table and pay the rent for his shop and the house he shares with his mother K Maheswari.
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