Massage - New Job Avenue For Blind

New Delhi, Jul 13 (UNI) A small group of blind students lined up last evening among nearly 300 graduates of a beauticians' school and picked up their Diplomas in Body Therapy-- or massage.

''It's a relatively new job avenue for visually challenged,'' said a spokesman for New Delhi-based Vandana Luthra Curls and Curves Institute of Beauty, Health and Management.

A school largely for beauticians, the Institute is slowly helping visually challenged youngsters eke out a living as body therapists-- or masseuses.

As many as seven BRA students were among Institute trainees felicitated at the convocation last evening by Delhi Education Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely.

''I have seen them perform and they do a wonderful job,'' Institute Director G S Kochar said, adding that the visually challenged seemed blessed with uncommon sensitivity.

For the past three years, the Institute has run a three-month Diploma course for the blind, taken so far by more than 60 participants from New Delhi-based Blind Relief Association.

Dr Kochar said the Diploma course his Institute offers is very structured and involves use of gadgets.

BRA officials say massage mainly involves touch, a function for which the blind by virtue of their handicap often have a better feel than a sighted person.

''Touch is the basic thing in massage and that is where a visually handicapped person almost has an advantage,'' according to BRA Placement Officer Absalom David. ''It's that advantage we try to accentuate.'' David says Thais have been doing it for over a hundred years.

In India, it has begun over the past decade or so.

He says at least two other institutions-- National Association for the Blind, Mumbai and National Institute for the Visually Handicapped, Chennai-- offer such courses.

Elsewhere, at Blind People's Association, Ahmedabad and NIVH, Dehradun, blind students are taught a more formal course of Assistant Physiotherapist.

Despite government efforts to help, landing a job is twice as hard for the visually challenged as for the rest.

Officials say massage is work a person can go on to do on his or her own rather than seek employment. Many students have set up their own businesses.

David said his masseuses are more or less like any other workmen. They arrive at their clients' on their own, perform and leave.

UNI