Memoir of a Specially-Abled Person

Unable to walk and converse normally with people, a tunnel of infinite darkness opened before me in which I found myself lost. By the time I was three, only a few things had dawned upon me, of which, one of the most important were about my bodily challenges – my inability to walk, talk, write, eat, sit, run and transact with a  hundred other activities which constitute life. My family did realise these problems but didn’t make me feel different, inferior, dependent or less worthy. 

The moment I managed to pass the threshold of my house and moved towards the playfield, I wasn’t allowed to play – “you will hurt yourself”, they’d typically reply. I would keep watching my relatives, friends and  neighbours playing, playing in that playfield which then appeared to me as vast as the universe itself – Taba’el, that’s what this ground situated in Chattabal is called. But playfields aren’t the places where we are supposed to spend all our time – School, it was schooling which worried my parents and family the most. They were convinced that I wouldn’t be able to attend school and even if I did, I wouldn’t be any good in academics. What better could have been expected of someone who is dependent in multiple ways on others and who is neither able to talk nor hold things properly? 

As destiny would have it, two of my elder sisters used to teach in a nearby school and it was decided that I be enrolled in the same school. I attended the school but my physical impairments hampered my learning and evolution in a number of ways. As a result I spent a good amount of time in nursery class. With the relentless efforts of my sisters, who happened to be my teachers as well, I somehow picked up the art of writing but writing with two hands. I used to write with my right hand and give it support with my left hand. My handwriting was so pathetic that it was considered almost impossible for anyone to read my papers.  However, as God would have it, he compensated for my physical fragility with a good supply of mental acumen. To everybody’s surprise, I topped my class when the annual exams were held. 

While the journey in my school continued, I was loved, taken care of and not bullied by any of my classmates but the challenges for me in society kept growing.  The moment I used to go to the market and ask for something, the shopkeeper would fail to understand my tattered words. Unwittingly, he would pass derogatory and demeaning comments. The same ordeal repeated when it came to public transport, where I had to make a lot of effort to communicate where I needed to go. The whole process was so exhausting that sometimes I wouldn’t even dare to ask the bus conductor to give my remaining money back for the fear that he might bully me. This social stigmatization had deep scars on my heart and mind, many of which have still not healed. Even today, when I have secured for myself a niche of sorts, I continue to receive foul comments targeting my bodily disabilities both on social media and otherwise. 

God had blessed me with this maniac obsession with my studies and from very early in life. I used to take my studies extremely seriously, to the point of sacrificing everything for my academics. This saved me fortuitously from the dark and depressing comments I used to receive erstwhile while going out. There was always an element of suspicion associated with me topping the class and my relatives and friends often used to tell me that I topped only at the behest of my sisters, who used to be my teachers. Nothing could have been more disarming as the remark discredited all my hard work and ignored all my toil I used to pass through despite my ill health. 

All this changed in a transformative manner as I entered my 8^th standard. My sisters left the school and by this time I was able to make it to my school on my own. I had this burning passion to challenge my physical boundaries and was desperate to learn cycling and despite my friends teasing me, I took upon myself the challenge and after hundreds of fouls and injuries, I drove the bicycle. This was no ordinary experience; this was no mere learning a new skill but opening new windows in my life, feeling liberated, equal to others and in a sense less and less dependent. The same year, I got myself a bicycle and used to cover a distance of almost six kilometres. All this may sound trivial and senseless to say, but this is the journey of a boy struggling to walk to somebody cycling amidst the jammed, crammed and risky roads. My mother was reluctant to my cycling to begin with, but a little bit of convincing did the job and my cycling and the passion for it continue to this day. 

Here lie some lessons for those who are raising children with disabilities. They need to understand that sometimes extra care and unnecessary restrictions take over the original disability. Parents need to give their children wings, not cages.  

It was in the 8^th standard itself that few other things happened which changed the course of my life and the mention of which is important to set the future course in context. I have earlier spoken of my speaking disability, though it has improved by now, it used to be acute and severe in my childhood to the point that very few people could understand my speech. It was in the midst of this that our school announced intra-school debate on “Water – The Elixir of Life” and against all odds I decided to participate in the debate. My reservoir of knowledge had given me enough confidence that I knew the subject well but what was challenging was to stand up and speak in front of a hundred odd students and the jury. I had this habit of speaking extempore and without the help of any notes and the habit continues to this day. I reached the stage, started in the name of God almighty. I took the audience by surprise and left them as well as myself awestruck for the next five minutes. I concluded my speech with the words “I feel tired and can’t speak more”. Applause pierced my ears. I could see tears rolling down some of my friends’ eyes who knew how difficult it was for me to speak.  

In the 8^th standard itself I got enrolled in a tuition academy where I got to interact with students from other schools – the Biscoes, Convents and Burnhalls of the valley in particular. These schools were far more reputed and advanced than the school I was coming from. More importantly, these students were bright students of their respective institutions and this gave me an unprecedented opportunity to evaluate myself and to gauge my merit against those of some of my brightest contemporaries. If any of my friends from those days is reading this piece, he will vouch for the fact that I always outperformed others, despite my attendant health complications. This grabbed my mentors’ attention and they started guiding me in extraordinary ways, providing books, recommending video lectures that helped me extend my canvas of understanding and imagination. 

I recall reading Devan-i-Ghalib and “The Brief History of Time ” during the same days but understanding very little of these books. I appeared in a scholarship test conducted by KVEI and topped the list and this was the moment of true realisation for others that whatever I have been achieving in my school has been the result of my own efforts and not the aid and assistance of my sisters. When the time came for the annual examination, which used to be conducted by DIET, I happened to top the complex in which were stationed students from no less than ten schools. This not only fuelled my confidence but assured me of my abilities to do the impossible. 

Yet, my academic excellence had no telling upon how people treated me outside school, in markets, buses, shops and other places – theirs was a typical derogatory attitude peppered by senseless comments and irresponsible remarks. Rarely do people realise that their words can ruin somebody forever and what is a joke to them is the question of life and death for others. 

This was also the time that I came under the influence of Rouf Rahat and Saleem Salik, now well known names in our literary landscape, whose selfless guidance and brotherly care honed my literary skills and I started making intermittent ventures into literature, now writing a ghazal, then a Nazam and then something else. 

I kept scaling my academics and now comes my matriculation, the class where all eyes were fixed and given my previous performance, more eyes were looking at me and expecting something big. But to achieve that big, I needed a little legal favour from the Board of School Education. I approached the authorities, requested them to give me an extra half an hour, as was enshrined in the law. I explained to them that I can’t take the help of a scribe as it is impossible for me to dictate. The hardships I faced to convince the authorities and the amount of time it took is beyond expression and even today as I write these lines, the experience brings deep sadness and melancholy. 

We were stationed at the board – almost 36 of us, specially-abled students who faced one problem or the other. But the people who were supervising us were so unkind and rough that the trauma they inflicted during that exam session continued for a long time – and the irony wasn’t lost on me that they claimed to be specially trained in dealing with persons with disabilities. 

This is the general complaint and the maltreatment and misbehaviour against persons with disabilities continues unabated, something which our society deeply needs to reflect upon. 

With the fear of making this narration unnecessarily long, suffice to say that after passing my matriculation in the first division, I joined a nearby higher secondary – the much hailed SP Higher Secondary and my teachers were so caring and affectionate that their confidence which they confided in me helped me to good. The private tuition I received during this time deserves a mention that all my teachers – Mr. Muneer Alam in particular made me realise that my bodily limitations don’t make me inferior to anyone; instead my mental gifts placed me beyond others. The classmates, friends and acquaintances were empathetic and I had to face not an iota of insult or bullying from any of my batch-mates. 

But this has not been everyone’s experience, many persons with disabilities I talk to report bullying from their batch mates and fellow students and this is so ruining that it can push someone into perpetual desperation and depression. Having spoken so much about my personal experiences, I leave out my experiences in my professional life for some future occasion, but here I would live to divert your attention to a few important aspects of the issues.

The challenge of restoring a life of dignity to persons with disabilities – the dignity I have myself been struggling for and of which I have spoken above, has to have at least a bilateral approach – ethical and legal. It seems almost a universal preconception and a deep rooted human bias that persons with disabilities aren’t full humans and are, in one way or the other inferior to able bodied persons. This bias seems to be rooted in the notion that individuals are to be evaluated in terms of their delivering capacities and their potential to “contribute”. Our civilizations, both Eastern and Western have made the delivering capacity of an individual the sore measure and criteria of his/her worth, dignity and right to live. The mechanised, rather technological society which we have found ourselves in has drawn a dictum on the stone that only those are entitled to a life of dignity who can be active agents of material generation, who can generate wealth and material resources, who aren’t meek to rely on others’ helping hand, but who, personifying power and strength can mould the world and tailor it to their needs, thereby proving themselves to be “fruitful individuals for the society”. 

This perspective of understanding people in terms of their utilitarian merit has not only overshadowed the concept of humanity as such, but exposed people with disabilities to vulnerabilities and discriminations of all sorts. It is extremely difficult for people, who are otherwise able-bodied, to understand the problems of and empathize with people with disabilities, for the psycho-social dimensions of these problems are so broad that only people with disabilities face them first hand and are rattled and broken by the same. The challenges which people with disabilities face are augmented and multiplied by discouraging social framework, lack of logistical support and prevalence of social mores that deteriorate and aggravate their situation further.

This economization of values and the sheer determination of people’s worth in terms of their ability to contribute to the economic produce has had detrimental consequences to the reception of persons with disabilities, hampering their claims to equality and a life of dignity. A basic revision of outlook is needed on this front and people are to be respected on the pure grounds of sanctity and dignity of life irrespective of their economic outcomes and their abilities to contribute to the society in general. These insights stem from my first hand observation – as somebody suffering from cerebral palsy, life has been like an uphill task and despite securing for myself a niche in academic and social circles based purely on hard work and determination, a life of dignity is nowhere in sight. On a daily basis, I have to witness the occasions of maltreatment and marginalisation, whereby people, who are unable to understand my words, go on passing vulgar and demoralising remarks. I often contemplate the plight of those, who are still lesser privileged, have no space to vent the maltreatment and lack of courtesy meted out to them. The psychological repercussions of such happenings are so destructive that it takes a long time for a victim to recover from these episodes and sometimes the victim doesn’t recover at all. If the academic excellence, fighting against all odds to secure for oneself a place of recognition doesn’t help a person to secure for himself/herself a life of general social dignity, one is left wondering, what else needs to be done to secure one’s right to life of dignity and respect – something which is so basic and inviolable a right that it should require no qualifications. When people with disabilities are disrespected, maltreated and given a realisation that they don’t belong to the normal lot, the detrimental consequences can well be figured out and these consequences corner people with disabilities into helplessness, insecurity, depression and a feeling of pervasive meaninglessness of life.  

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