Even for brisk walkers, it takes a two-day trek from the Solukhumbu district headquarters in Nepal to get to Goma Rai’s village. “The walk is easier in the winter. In the summer, the rains make you slip. The locals do not slip, but I did,” Goma smiles.

So, can you see the Everest from your house, we ask. “I have not seen. I cannot see,” Goma reminds, matter-of-factly. Goma lost her eyesight to prolonged typhoid when she was four-and-a-half years old. Five years later, she began a trek to Kathmandu with her farmer father Thapiman Rai to study
in a government school. Come 2010, and Goma had cleared the Common Admission Test. Then, the 24-year-old did the impossible and said “NO” to an IIM.

Her bags have been packed for the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. “TISS has always been my dream. I did my research, and found that it is the best institute for Human Resources. I got calls from Lucknow and Indore IIMs, but I would have been lost there,” reasons Goma, whose classes will start on June 14.

When Goma was a month into her fifth standard, a German sponsor stepped in. “She found me a school in Delhi, the logic being that India had more opportunities to offer. Then there was also the National Association for the Blind (NAB),” says Goma. So, the longest trek of her life brought Goma to the Delhi Police Public School, RK Puram.

“At NAB, we do not send students to special schools. Instead, we give them special attention at the hostel, with one-on-one interviews. For Goma, we held special Braille and Hindi classes,” says Shalini Khanna, director of the NAB’s Centre for Women, who was at the Delhi Police Public School when Goma joined.

NAB conducts three-month training for visually challenged girls in their centre, where training is given on computer skills, home science, handicrafts, and the like. It also starts a special three-month programme every March to orient Plus-II passouts for the admission season. It is preceded by a career counselling session, which boys, too, can attend.

“After I scored below 70 per cent in Class X, my sponsor suggested that I go back to Nepal for my Plus II. But I did not want to go back,” Goma says. But she had to. Goma says at the end of those two years she wanted to “get out of Nepal”. She, however, had to stay on to do a Bachelor in Social Work course.

After a stream of letters, Khanna advised her to return to India. She finally managed to get Goma down to India for a three-month computer course at NAB in May 2007. Goma stayed on, and was admitted to the Lady Shri Ram College’s BA (Programme) course in the foreign students’ quota. The NAB, which does not permit students to stay in its Hauz Khas facility, went out of its way to accommodate Goma for three years.

“I started my CAT preparation in my second year. Teachers helped, but the material was not available in Braille, and I had to resort to the Jaws Screen Reading Software to study from the e-text they provided me with,” said Goma. “Students from IIT who volunteered with the NAB tutored me in Maths.”

“The last time I went to my village was to renew my citizenship,” she says. So, after all these years, why not an Indian citizenship? “I did not even think of it. In fact, I did not feel the need. This country gives to outsiders the same privileges it gives to its people, if you are willing to work hard.”

And she’s not alone
Reena Bhatia was doing BCom second-year in Hindu College when wrong medication left her in a coma and robbed her of eyesight in 1999. After a seven-year gap, NAB helped her join Gargi College in 2006. She left Gargi to complete her BCom (Hons) through correspondence and give her CA exams. She has now passed the Common Proficiency Test in the first attempt.