Shunned by their families and burdened by their physical disability, a group of visually impaired men and women congregates in a church at a slum rehabilitation scheme near Pune to find the strength and inspiration to live

IT is a church with a difference. It hardly fits in with one’s definition of a church, one that conjures images of pews arranged neatly on either side of the aisle leading up to the altar with its high arches and stained-glass panels. Instead, it’s only a 10 ft by 10 ft room with an adjoining kitchen. The congregation is also quite unlike any you might have seen.
As the sun sets on a blistering day and dusk sets in, they start trickling down the lane, sometimes a lone man, sometimes a bunch of three or four. The churchgoers take steady, measured steps as they make their way forward. Finally, by 7.30 pm, they all climb up the narrow staircase leading to the apartment that is to be their church this week.
It neither matters to them that the stairs are unlit nor that the lone 100-watt bulb provides only dim light in the room for the 40-odd people who are packed in there. All of them, except a group of children present, are visually impaired.
The Sabbath Day service lasts about an hour. Starting off with a few hymns sung aloud in Marathi, the congregation moves on to reading the Bible in Braille. Before winding up the church service with a prayer for the happiness they’ve been given even as they continue to feel their way around in a dark world, it is time to give their testimonies.
And speaking with unbridled passion is 50-year-old Arun Kurne. He has reason to be thankful —he was cured of Stage II leprosy a few years ago and since then has only this brotherhood to depend on after his wife and children deserted him. He feels doubly blessed since he knows lepers being cured marked the ministry of Jesus in the Bible, just as giving sight to the blind did.

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