The first issue was spread across the table in pieces.
There was an article in English, its Hindi version beside it, and somewhere underneath them was the Urdu text. Photographs had been selected, headlines were being adjusted, and we were trying to make everything fit without making the pages feel crowded.
We were not preparing a brochure for an event. We were trying to create something that would return every month.
A magazine.
The idea had started simply enough. We were already working around three areas that kept appearing in our work: eye care, eye donation and the empowerment of visually impaired people. We wanted to take these subjects beyond individual programmes and put useful information in front of people regularly.
So we decided to publish a monthly magazine.
We called it i Care Info.
But from the beginning, we decided that it would not speak in only one language. We wanted it in English, Hindi and Urdu. That meant that every issue had to carry the same larger purpose across three languages, and every month we had to repeat the process.
The magazine was not meant to be an organisational newsletter. We did not want page after page telling people what Antardrishti had done. We wanted the publication to have a life of its own.
There would be articles on eye care and ways of preventing avoidable eye problems. There would be information about eye donation, because awareness could not depend only on a pledge campaign or an occasional public event. And there would be stories about visually impaired people, because we wanted to challenge something much deeper than a lack of information.
We wanted to challenge people’s expectations.
A story about a blind person who had studied, found employment, built a career or achieved something independently was not included simply because it was a nice story. We wanted a sighted reader to see that blindness did not automatically mean dependence or inability.
That was particularly important when it came to children.
A family with a blind child could easily begin with fear. Parents might wonder whether the child would study, work, marry, manage a home or live independently. If they had never seen a blind person doing those things, their imagination could stop at the disability.
A success story could give that imagination somewhere else to go.
A reader might know another family with a blind child. They might remember the person they had read about and tell those parents, “You should not assume that your child cannot do these things. Look at what someone else has done.”
We could not know where a story would travel after someone finished reading it.
But we wanted it to travel.
That was why the magazine contained more than articles. There were interviews and success stories, quizzes and posters, infographics and a feature that could take one subject and explore it more deeply. The idea was to communicate in different ways because not everyone absorbs information in the same way.
Some readers might stop at an infographic.
Someone else might read an interview.
A quiz might make a person discover that something they believed about eye donation was actually wrong.
And someone might remember a story about a blind person long after they had forgotten everything else in the issue.
The three languages were part of the same thinking. We did not want awareness to become something available mainly to people comfortable reading English. Hindi and Urdu were not translations added at the end; they were part of the reason for creating the publication in the first place.
The 2014 convention report later described i Care Info as a monthly newspaper devoted to eye care and visually impaired people, published in English, Hindi and Urdu, with expert writing and news as well as social and empowerment content. Its stated purpose went beyond medical information: it was also intended to build awareness, inform parents and peers, influence public opinion and create content around empowerment.
That was exactly what we were trying to do.
But producing three-language content every month was not as simple as deciding what should appear on the cover.
One issue would be moving towards completion while we were already thinking about the next one. Articles had to be selected. Interviews had to be arranged. Stories had to be written and edited. Information had to be checked. The same material had to be prepared in three languages. Photographs had to be chosen and pages had to be laid out.
Then, just when we thought an issue was almost finished, we would find something that needed to be changed.
A headline was too long.
A photograph did not work with the layout.
A paragraph needed editing.
One language occupied more space than another.
A page that looked balanced in English suddenly looked crowded after the Hindi or Urdu version was placed on it.
It was the kind of work that could consume an entire day without producing anything that looked dramatic from the outside.
At the end, there was simply a magazine.
But that was precisely the point.
We wanted something ordinary enough that people could pick it up without feeling that they were being given a lesson in social awareness.
The first issue appeared in September 2013. It continued as a monthly publication until December 2017 and became, according to our later records, the first trilingual magazine in Hindi, English and Urdu focused on eye care, eye donation and empowerment of visually impaired people.
For more than four years, we kept returning to that table.
Different stories.
Different photographs.
Different subjects.
But the same three broad purposes.
Protect the eyes.
Understand eye donation.
And see the person beyond blindness.
The third one was perhaps the hardest.
Eye-care information can be checked. Eye-donation information can be explained. But changing someone’s idea about what a blind person can become is more difficult.
You cannot simply tell a parent, “Your child can be independent,” and expect fear to disappear.
Sometimes you need to show them someone who has already done it.
That is why the stories of visually impaired people mattered so much to us. They were not there to make the magazine emotional. They were there to provide evidence.
A blind person studying was evidence.
A blind person working was evidence.
A blind person managing a family, travelling, building a career or learning something new was evidence.
We wanted sighted people to encounter those examples often enough that blindness would stop being associated only with what a person could not do.
In that sense, i Care Info was doing something larger than publishing information.
It was trying to change the conversation before the conversation even happened.
And while we were doing that, we were learning something ourselves.
We were learning how much useful information was scattered across our work. We were interviewing people, collecting stories, creating educational material and finding resources that could help others. Every month, we were gathering pieces from different places and putting them together in one place.
We did not know it at the time, but this habit would eventually lead somewhere else.
A magazine could inform a person.
But what if a person had a question that the magazine could not answer?
What if they needed a particular resource?
What if they needed to speak to someone who had already faced the same problem?
What if information could become a connection rather than simply a page?
Those questions would eventually lead us towards Drishti Connect.
But before there was a platform, there were pages.
And before there were pages, there was the simple belief that awareness had to keep moving even when we were not standing in front of an audience.
For four years, i Care Info kept moving.
Three languages.
Three areas of work.
Hundreds of pages.
And behind all of them was the same hope: that somewhere, sometime, something a person read would change what they believed about their eyes, about eye donation, or about a person who could not see.
We were publishing a magazine, but what we really wanted to publish was a different way of seeing.