Bhavna Botta was born with athetoid cerebral palsy, which leaves her unable to walk, talk or write. But that hasn’t stopped her from completing a commerce degree in Chennai with flying colours, controlling the computer only with her eyes. She is perhaps the first person in India – and one of the very few in the world – to have achieved such academic success using only the eye pointing technique.

With eye pointing technology, a camera tracks the user’s gaze, enabling them to scroll through a display of letters or words on a monitor. They then make selections by looking at the signs for ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Alternatively, an assistant can read their gaze direction and enter the text manually.

Bhavna’s rehabilitation process began when she was just six months old. Before she got started on the eye-pointing technique, she was supported during her school years by Vidya Sagar, a group that works to help children with neurological disabilities. The organisation developed a simple alpha-numeric chart specially for her.

An eye for style

Bhavna is now 23 and just out of college, but she’s already an entrepreneur. She runs a textile enterprise, Saahaagika, which she describes as a “business with a social conscience”.

Saahaagika uses organic textiles sourced from tribal communities in the region. Its silk comes from Ahimsa, a firm that pioneered a technique to obtain silk without killing the silkworm. And Bhavna has hooked up with design studio Upasanahttp://www.upasana.in/, based in Tamil Nadu’s experimental ‘universal town’ of Auroville, which markets organic cotton textiles and outfits, and supports the cotton farmer community.

Saahaagika means natural. “It has to be organic,” Bhavna points out with her eye. Before launching her business, she researched the fabrics through the internet and other sources. She visited boutiques and watched customer behaviour, besides quizzing her family and friends.

Bhavna is a hands-on entrepreneur. She handles all her official communication and serves the customers at her shop. An assistant follows her to support her physically, but the negotiations are all hers. And they sometimes involve significant sums of money, like the bank loan of 200,000 rupees (2880 euros) she needed to set up her shop.\

With a little help

“I’m not sure how she manages it, but when she comes back home, she has the job done,” says her mother Kalpana Rao. When technology fails, Bhavna can always depend on her mother. Her laptop had just crashed when I met her, but her mother was at hand to read aloud Bhavna’s eye-pointing from the chart.

Kalpana had thought Bhavna should take up science, but Bhavna had other ideas. She’s a woman who instinctively knows what she wants, her mother says. “She’s always been like that. In school, even as an eighth grader, she was sure she wanted to do business.” Then after her commerce degree, the family wanted her to go on to do an MBA, but Bhavna wanted to set up shop straight away.

Ready for the next challenge, Bhavna is now focused on opening another Saahaagika outlet in Anna Nagar, near south Chennai. Her parents offered her a loan to set up her business, but preferring self-reliance, Bhavna decided to stick with the bank.

Saahaagika’s clientele tends to be older women, but Bhavna is looking at trying to expand the youth market and get youngsters to root for her organic outfits. Her ultimate vision is to set up an adda, a boutique that doubles as a library, gallery and coffee shop. 

By Hema Vijay / Women's Feature Service