When you don’t have any other option, you’ve got to find some way to survive,” says this 35-year-old originally from Kanpur, who refuses to romanticise his life story.

Apart from working in his family’s tanning business, he is also an electronics whiz and is now venturing into the glam arena. Nasser’s banner, Great Entertainments
with his partner Shamsad Alam, is producing a film titled Shadow: The Dark Side of the Truth, in which Nasser plays the main lead. “It’s the first time in the Indian film industry that a real blind person will act in a film as its protagonist. Directed by Rohit Nayar, it’s an action thriller whose fight direction team is from Thailand. The film is slated for release around June and apart from me, it stars Milind Soman, Sonali Kulkarni, Hrishitaa Bhatt, Sonia Mehra and Sachin Khedekar. With a Rs 15 crore budget, we hope to prove that we are here to make great movies,” he says.

Nasser has other ambitions as well. “Next, I’d like to start an exclusive post-production commercial studio on a scale that we lack currently to make good cinema
. Although this would need an investment of Rs 25 crore, it will set a new benchmark in production. We are finalising the details for our own music label. Like the movies, our music will have no boundaries. We will also soon be in the TV space with two channels — music and films. My single objective is to take creativity to a new level. Once you tell me that something is not possible for me, I start to think, ‘Is that really so?’” he says.

But from where does he get his motivation for these ambitions? “When I lost my vision early in life, I was told, ‘Why don’t you take admission in a blind school and learn braille?’ I opposed that. I didn’t want to do anything that blind people did. I wanted to try and live as normally as possible,” he says. Nasser also shuns any notions of pity. He is a very driven person. Some people would call it ‘fire in the belly’. “I am blind but I have a vision beyond what normal people can see. Swimming against the current is what gives me pleasure,” he signs off.