MCCHS: 50 years after

Readers of this blog know that not long after finding myself a `person with disability', I started on a campaign of some manner of advocacy for disability rights, especially in educational institutions, at least in India. Recently, I found myself presented with the perfect opportunity to do some good. More precisely, I was contacted by some school-mates of almost 50 years standing, saying they were planning a sort of major reunion in January 2017 for the batch which graduated from Madras Christian College High School in the summer of 1967. I wrote back explaining my `wheelchair status' and the possible practical problems that might prevent my participating in the festivities. To my unalloyed glee, I got a call from Anantha Padmanabhan (one of a pair of twins from my section in XI-th standard, or 6th Form as we called it back then) giving an undertaking that an earnest attempt would be made to eliminate all such `problems' because they  wanted me to be at the reunion in January. 

So I suggested in an email to the Headmaster that I be allowed to make a tour of the school and make a list of things that would need to be done to render the school accessible - not just for me at this reunion, but for many possible future students with locomotor disabilities. (I even offered to help defray the cost involved). Anantha is a doer. He followed up my email with personal visits to the school to talk to the HM and Ms. Jacinth, the secretary of the OBA (Old boy's association). The upshot of it all was that I went to MCCHS today, along with my new old friend Anantha, met many of the Dramatis Personae, got the HM's permission and assurances of administrative help along with blessings for my suggested POA, I took some photographs to corroborate my assertions, and started thinking of the best possible way to make my case. The obvious answer was my blog, so here we go.

One of my primary requests would be for putting up ramps in many places. In order to counter any objections raised about the cost incurred, let me refer the reader to my post http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.in/2016/03/fit-any-steps-design.html in this blog, for a design which could have been followed easily in the carpentry class I remember from the school of 50 years ago. 

When I started talking about ramps to Ms. Jacinth, she said they did not like the idea of ramps because they were used by two-wheeler drivers to park their vehicle where there were supposed to be none. An example of one of the many places I'd like to see such a ramp is in this place in front of the

 main school building. A raised platform without a ramp is, in my eyes, a blatant symbol of exclusion of the wheelchair user and acts on me like a red rag on a bull!. The tree in front and the cement seats nearby would not permit easy parking!

Not far from this spot is the staff toilet. 

This `L' shaped construction is meant to protect the modesty of a staff member, but serves to keep out a potential user on a wheelchair. Surely, having a simple screen instead of a cement construction would solve both problems. If you are the sort of wheelchair user who simply cannot get up to hobble a few paces, then you have no hope of getting past this `L'. On the other hand, if you are a little more mobile, like me, then what is in store for you after clearing the `L' hurdle is the second picture above. It seems to me that a stand-alone disabled-friendly toilet might be the best solution! 

One place I should have photographed, but forgot to, was the two sets of three or four steps at the front entrance to the main building (on either side of the sets of taps near the staff toilet mentioned above). A small ramp here would be most helpful. I need to talk to an engineer/architect for the most sensible design of a ramp in these narrow steps.

Another space which could do with some ramps (of a slightly different design than my `fit-any-flight' design is in the assembly area between the library side of the school and the main playground (F2?)

which has some five or six shallow steps sloping down gracefully to the ground. 

I then did a short trip down to F4, now taken over by the MRF for its Cricket coaching activities. The short trip from the gate of F4 to the Ravi Mammen Memorial Swsimming Pool (which I really wanted to see for Ravi's sake - he had been a class-mate of mine after all, with whom I have played inter-section cricket matches) was paved with one of those artsy tiles of irregular shape, which necessitate a wheelchair's negotiating ups and downs where a wheel could get snagged.

When it was time to get back to where we had started, we had the good fortune of running into the interior decorator overseeing the renovation work going on at the auditorium as part of a much larger civil work that has apparently been entrusted to the architects Pithavadian and Partners. When we spoke to him, he agreed that this was the best time to make any suggestions that were deemed necessary, since incorporating some of these features at the construction stage were obviously preferable to doing expensive retro-fitting at a later stage, post construction. The first thing that the concept of an auditorium triggered in me was whether there would be a ramp to make the dais accessible. My fears were well-founded; I found that this 

was the way to the dais!

I would really welcome the opportunity to talk to the architect from P&P - whose contact details were kindly passed on to me via Anantha by Ms. Jacinth after the HM gave the green signal - to discuss many things, including:

• many places which could do with some ramps; eg. 

• the possibility of smoothing out rough edges so the terrain in many places need not look like this

 and be a nightmare for a wheelchair user;

• his advice on where to squeeze in a (probably stand-alone external) elevator. Not just potential wheelchair users, even the older teachers whose knees protest against yet another ascent of two or three flights of stairs, would greatly benefit from such an addition to the school's infrastructure!