Rao is a partially blind standup comedian who loves bragging that he can joke about sex in front of his mother because "I can't see her". She started becoming blurry when he was eight. At that age, he was diagnosed with juvenile macular degeneration - a condition that damaged his retina and rendered him with only partial eyesight in both eyes. Rao now has only peripheral vision so he cannot see faces or read books. For him, crossing the road, climbing up the stairs, walking down the road to buy a cigarette are all forms of extreme sport. "It is the longest relationship I have been in," says Rao, now 30, referring to his eyesight that has been diminishing over the last 23 years.

Before every show, his mind is a battleground. What if I trip on the stairs? What if I can't find the mike plug on time? Where exactly is the bottle of water placed? What if I mistake a boy in the front row for a girl? Will I become the joke? But he wins over these internal demons and gets on stage anyway, because, here, his misery is material. "Standup is as much therapy for me as it is a profession," says Rao, who recently performed his first-ever solo show called Out of Sight, where he establishes right at the beginning that he is partially blind.

The show is an amalgam of his personal wounds that turned into jokes on healing. Since Rao does not carry a cane or wear thick, dark glasses, Indians refuse to believe that he has an impairment. When he tells them he is visually impaired, they ask him, "But where's your cane?" "Indians see disability as either black or white. They don't understand partial blindness," Rao says. Once, during an airport check-in, he told the lady at the counter that he would need assistance as he is partially blind. She asked him if he would like a wheelchair. "I let them soak in till they become funny," he says, about these dollops of entertainment that have found their way into his confessional show. However, it took almost two years to get here.

When he started out as a standup in 2011, this former IT company copywriter preferred to hide behind general jokes - the banal abbreviations in the technical mails he used to proofread, lame jokes of colleagues about his glorified desk job, how the Welsh accent makes even the Indian accent sound posh and why singer Bono should use Google (a reference to U2's song I can't find what I'm looking for). He would then, suddenly, launch into jokes about blindness but the transition was awkward. "Nobody would laugh when I did jokes about blindness. They could not get why a person without flaws was making fun of the visually impaired," says Rao.

Today, his voice is more authentic. Rao - who has performed everywhere from a middle-aged lady's garage ("they were probably expecting a stripper") to corporate events - has lost many of his inhibitions. "I don't feel self-conscious asking for assistance anymore." He does not feel the need to memorize the seating order of girls and boys in the front row and when people ask him about his absent cane, he has learnt to say, "I don't have it because I can't find it."

Besides, Rao, who says he is in a happy relationship now, does not shy away from discussing the dangers of dating as a partially blind person such as waking up to find a guy in his bed the morning after. Even in front of his mother.

Source: Times of India