KOCHI: The person sitting at the telephone desk inside the public relations officer's room at the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) office might appear to be a nondescript man. But he is not your run of the mill employee at a government office. There is something special about Achenkunju Thomas, who will be retiring on February 28 as the EPFO telephone operator. The specialty lies in the fact that he has an uncanny sense of sound.
Of course, people might point out that he is visually impaired!
And that it is the innate ability of the visually impaired to have a heightened sense of hearing and smell. But what makes Achenkunju stand out is the huge volume of calls and persons he caters too at the EPFO office without ever making them feel unrecognised!
According to Gopinath, who used to call the office regularly, he was in for a surprise when he called happened to call EPFO a second time with a month's gap between the first two calls.
"Not only did Achenkunju recognise me immediately but also connected me to the officer with whom I had the business with," he said. A visitor doesn't need to repeat details such as name, manner and purpose of the call or even the section, said his colleagues. It is a rare gift, they added.
"At a time when people who have the gift of sight rarely remember people whom they have met even more than once, Achenkunju still remembers the voices of the people whom he connected over the private branch exchange (PBX) when he began his career with EPFO," said his colleagues.
However, Achenkunju remains unfazed. "There is nothing special about me," he said humbly. According to him, being visually impaired never bogged him down. "Well, I was not born blind," said Achenkunju. "I lost my eye-sight in an accident when I was around four or five years old. You know kids of that age never remain still and boys are never still at all. There was a confectionary making shop near my house and one day I raced into the shop while they were caramelising sugar. Don't remember what happened, I think I bumped into the person stirring the pot. The result was that the boiling hot sugar fell on me and I sustained severe burn injuries," he said.
According to him, at that time his family never thought that the burns would eventually lead to him losing his eye-sight. "There was some connection and I lost my capability to see. And since I was the only boy in my family, the focus of my parents got centered on getting my sight back," said Achenkunju. The parents were so focused on this mission that Achenkunju lost many academic years.
"By the time it became very certain that I will never be able to see, I had surpassed my school days. However, I enrolled in a blind school and appeared for the SSLC examination after a year and half of schooling as an adult," he said.
It helped to have five elder sisters who were good in studies, he added. "After SSLC I joined the pre-degree course and completed it. Throughout the entire time, neither did I ever lose hope nor courage," said Achenkunju, who did a stint as a teacher with the Blind School at Aluva. It was during the time, EPFO called applications for the telephone operator post.
"I got through and joined the office in 1992. I am happy that I have been able to cater to the people and also perform my duty without my handicap becoming a hindrance ever," said Achenkunju.