Look, I can cook!

A cooking contest for the visually challenged aims to create awareness among the sighted 

- SUSAMMA JOY KURIAN

Esref Armagan was born blind, but boy can he ‘see’!

Born in 1953 into an impoverished family in Istanbul, Armagan paints, in colours, shapes and shades. His art—rarely abstract, mostly landscape—has astounded many, particularly because his paintings have the right scale and perspective. He has even been the subject of a 2008 study by the University of Toronto and Harvard University. Researchers monitored his brain and found his visual cortex lighting up as he sketched, just as it does for people with sight. Armagan and his art challenge our ideas about colour and understanding of sight. It took him decades of work and perseverance to master the method of using his fingertips and mind as visual aids. And yet, some critics have discredited his work— exhibited in Turkey, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic—as not his own. Armagan’s amazing ability has been often dwarfed by his disability. And, he is not alone.

Participants of Golden Eye Chef 2023, an annual cooking contest for the blind since 2019, know what it means to have your identity distilled down to your disability. “When we held the competition in 2019, we went live on YouTube, and one of the first comments we received was ‘even they feel the need to cook now? They are blind, how do they even eat?’” recalls Akhil Srivastava, managing trustee of NGO Antardrishti and the brain behind the competition. “People do not know what they are capable of. We realised that more than motivating blind people, we need to create awareness among the sighted.”