The Colour of Words

All colors made me happy: even gray.

My eyes were such that literally they
Took photographs.

Rao Uncle was visiting. Almost 20 years ago, we used to exchange books as neighbours in Delhi. But this time we were caught in the catching up of where is who, some more chai, cracker, cutlet. As he slipped his feet into his shoes to leave, he asked, ‘But who’s your favourite writer?’ 

‘Nabokov,’ I chose one.

Shocked eyebrows shot up and then his face fell in folds of disappointment, disgust almost. Did I say something that’s not to be said to elders? I bit my tongue and smiled. Like when Papa chanced upon Z and me together-alone between the book aisles in the library, I presented without being asked, at dinner that day, my defense – the reads Z had been recommending. Papa’s eyebrows shot up, but in his calm, typically understated and almost talking to himself manner, he said, ‘He was suggesting D H Lawrence?’ That only sent me scurrying post haste to grab a DHL.

If you said ‘Nabokov’ at Word Association, the first, only, fastest response would be ‘Lolita’! Its ‘depraved’ theme makes readers overlook the aesthetic bliss of its delightful telling – the almost-dream sequences, the lilting, lifting prose, dazzling images softened by his nuanced brush strokes of memory and passion. But we are judges of human failings first.

I read Lolita later. I loved him first for his autobiography, Speak, Memory – the Bible on my bedside that constitutes my ‘spiritual reading’ as opposed to the ‘carnal reading’ famously distinguished by the literary critic, Frank Kermode as, ‘the hurried, utilitarian information processing that constitutes the bulk of our daily reading diet and ‘spiritual reading’, reading done with focused attention for pleasure, reflection, analysis, and growth.’

I came upon Speak, Memory while reading about minds, working of minds, wrong wirings and wiring into my major love – synaesthesia*. 

Nabokov, a synaesthetic, could see and feel colour, a faculty that equipped him to create word images that breathed. I cannot read more than three pages of Speak, Memory at one go, on good days. So suffused with sensory delight it is that one has to stop to soak it in. Like chocolate, I leave some for later. 

If I had some paints handy, I would mix burnt sienna and sepia for you as to match the color of a 'ch' sound. And you would appreciate my radiant 's' if I could pour into your cupped hands some of those luminous sapphires that I touched as a child.

The long ‘a’ of the English alphabet . . . has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French a evokes polished ebony. This black group also includes hard ‘g’ (vulcanized rubber) and ‘r’ (a sooty rag being ripped). Oatmeal ‘n’, noodle-limp ‘l’, and the ivory-backed hand-mirror of ‘o’ take care of the white. . . . Passing on to the blue group, there is steely ‘x’, thundercloud ‘z’ and huckleberry ‘h’. Since a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape, I see ‘q’ as browner than ‘k’, while ‘s’ is not the light blue of ‘c’, but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl.

And here are indisputably the most beautiful lines in English Literature that I have read (I have read little) and read over and over:

I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past. I like to imagine, in consummation and resolution of those jangling chords, something as enduring, in retrospect, as the long table that on summer birthdays and namedays used to be laid for afternoon chocolate out of doors, in an alley of birches, limes and maples at its debouchment on the smooth sanded space of the garden proper that separated the park and the house. I see the tablecloth and the faces of seated people sharing in the animation of light and shade beneath a moving, a fabulous foliage, exaggerated, no doubt, by the same faculty of impassioned commemoration, of ceaseless return, that makes me always approach that banquet table from the outside, from the depth of the park —as if the mind, in order to go back thither, had to do so with the silent steps of a prodigal, faint with excitement.

Through a tremulous prism, I distinguish the features of relatives and familiars, mute lips serenely moving in forgotten speech. I see the steam of the chocolate and the plates of blueberry tarts. I note the small helicopter of a revolving samara that gently descends upon the tablecloth, and, lying across the table, an adolescent girl's bare arm indolently extended as far as it will go, with its turquoise-veined underside turned up to the flaky sunlight, the palm open in lazy expectancy of something —perhaps the nutcracker. In the place where my current tutor sits, there is a changeful image, a succession of fade-ins and fade-outs; the pulsation of my thought mingles with that of the leaf shadows and turns Ordo into Max and Max into Lenski and Lenski into the schoolmaster, and the whole array of trembling, transformations is repeated.

And then, suddenly, just when the colors and outlines settle at last to their various duties —smiling, frivolous duties —some knob is touched and a torrent of sounds comes to life: voices speaking all together, a walnut cracked, the click of a nutcracker carelessly passed, thirty human hearts drowning mine with their regular beats; the sough and sigh of a thousand trees, the local concord of loud summer birds, and, beyond the river, behind the rhythmic trees, the confused and enthusiastic hullabaloo of bathing young villagers, like a background of wild applause.

In the same vein, another piece that I often refer to and badger others into reading, is from Girl With a Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier. 

"What have you been doing here, Griet?" he asked.

I was surprised by the question but knew enough to hide it. "Chopping vegetables, sir. For the soup."

I always laid vegetables out in a circle, each with its own section like a slice of pie. There were five slices: red cabbage, onions, leeks, carrots, and turnips. I had used a knife edge to shape each slice, and placed a carrot disc in the center.

The man tapped his finger on the table. "Are they laid out in the order in which they will go into the soup?" he suggested, studying the circle.

"No, sir." I hesitated. I could not say why I had laid out the vegetables as I did. I simply set them as I felt they should be, but I was too frightened to say so to a gentleman.

"I see you have separated the whites," he said, indicating the turnips and onions. "And then the orange and the purple, they do not sit together. Why is that?" He picked up a shred of cabbage and a piece of carrot and shook them like dice in his hand.

I looked at my mother, who nodded slightly.

"The colors fight when they are side by side, sir."

In the 2010 BBC documentary How Do You Solve a Problem Like Lolita?, writer and broadcaster Stephen Smith traces Nabokov’s trail to attempt cracking open the mind that gave us Lolita.

* Synesthesia is a neurological condition, often described as a sensory cross-wiring in the brain. In its most common manifestation, people see letters in colour. Some also see numbers in colour, hear music and speech in colour, taste shapes, smell sounds ...

The Spiral of Silence

You are here: Home » Supplements » Sunday Herald » The spiral of silence

Shefali Tripathi Mehta, May 26, 2013, DHNS:

Home truth

When we see unfairness around us, our reaction is mostly to remain silent. The courage that is required to speak up in such situations is wanting. The negativity and the fear of confrontation force us to forfeit our rights and silence our voice of gumption. But, isn’t it about time we stood up for ourselves, and for others, wonders Shefali Tripathi Mehta

A new series of TV commercials that show the house-help being asked by the family to join them at the dining table for a meal, and a waiter being offered a cold drink by the customers he is serving, seem to have struck a chord with us. It asserts, ‘Hawa badlegi’, the winds of change are imminent. 

So, who will bring the change? Any change, not just to have the house-help sit on the sofa with us, but the transformation of the innumerable situations which make us feel cheated, defeated, wronged because these are wrought out of some bias, unfairness, unreasonableness, or simply, unthinking, unsympathetic attitudes?

Big and little heartaches, injustices of life dot our days. Initially, when we are exposed to the vagaries of living in a world with others and the skewed balance of right and wrong, most of us try to take things on, improve, and make a difference. Gradually, as our attempts are thwarted, the ‘what can I do?’ helplessness that dismays at first goes on to become a way of life, a convenient refrain.

When we see a vehicle that is speeding, erratically driven, or the driver talking on mobile phone, we fume but do nothing about it. If the vehicle hits someone, kills someone, we are outraged. Bangalore hasn’t forgotten the 2006 accident involving a Volvo bus that ploughed into a bus shelter killing two and injuring 20. Yet, today, it is not uncommon to see Volvo bus drivers deep in conversation on their mobile phones while driving the enormous, speedy buses through our delinquent traffic. Why don’t the passengers object?  

We look for ‘someone we know’ in government offices, police department or any other agency that we need to ‘deal’ with; on being harassed or cheated, we do not report for fear of consequences, of a backlash. We conform to the ‘take it or leave’ attitude of those in control everywhere. Little children get abused in school buses and in schools, yet we do not report suspicious or unacceptable events or behaviour because we are afraid of the school’s disapproval or action against us. The same obsequious attitude persists in our other dealings — schools and colleges impose arbitrary rules, demand ‘development charges’ without receipt; packed malls and film theatres that make a few hundred on each ticket keep air conditioning switched off; clerks in offices are ‘not on their seat’ for hours while we wait; the courier reaches us in 10 days; some post never reaches us; the grocery store does not add the ‘free’ item; overcrowded ticketing, billing counters have one working among the several unmanned; and railways, the lifeline of the millions, grows out of bounds for them as shoddy technology in the name of progress takes over reservations, and touts find loopholes to sell tickets to those who can buy at a premium.  

Blinding biases

A person, apparently of limited means, travelling in an airplane, was treated contemptuously by the cabin attendant who kept asking him rudely what his problem (illness) was, insisting on speaking in English, a language clearly the passenger did not understand. The gentleman and his escort were travelling for treatment to a big city and only dire necessity could have compelled them to take a flight. The crew’s duty is to serve the passengers and not judge who deserves their attention or contempt. But bigotry and biases make people shame their position repeatedly. The person who needed the most care onboard was ignored and humiliated, and men in business suits, completely capable of wearing their own jackets, were graciously helped into them.

What were the other travellers, I included, doing? Watching it all, feeling the anger, the shame, the indignation, and yet keeping quiet? After I registered a complaint and was assured of necessary action, the incident came up on social media, people were disgusted, shared similar experiences and offered recourse, including never patronising the airline again. But social media is only a likeness of the real world. It is easy to vent on online forums. The courage that is required to speak up in real situations is wanting.

The negativity, and the fear of confrontation, of not finding support from others, or simply of what onlookers may dismiss as ‘making a scene’, stops us from putting ourselves into confrontational situations, forfeit our rights and silence our voice of gumption.

Apathetic system

Early this April, in a small town in Uttar Pradesh, four sisters aged between 20 and 30 years were returning home in the evening after invigilating a school exam when two men on a motorcycle sprayed acid on them with a Holi pichkari. One girl, severely injured, lost an eye, and the others suffered burns in the brazen attack, which was someone’s idea of fun, perhaps? Another young girl lost an eye and lies critically burnt after an acid attack on her just as she arrived in Mumbai to join the Army.

We, especially women, are told to fear and not take on hooligans, jealous exes and eve-teasers who may resort to revenge and who always seem to get away without punishment. Criminals, perverts, thieves and petty wrongdoers are a part of the society we live in. But for them to take control, to go about audaciously committing crimes and not be punished, adds to the despondency of the man on the street.

We have seen people losing lives over trifles. We have witnessed the ordeal the families of Sabrina Lal, Aman Kachru and Nitish Katara went through to get justice for their loved ones. But for each one that got justice, distressingly delayed even, there are hundreds that didn’t — Sanjana Singh of Bangalore, who died when a wall that was found to be of poor quality, constructed with no inspection and supervision, collapsed on her; or Kshama Chopra Shetye of Gurgaon who, along with her unborn baby, was crushed under the wheels of a rashly-driven BMW. We know how difficult the path to redress is. The fight is not just against the criminals, but against a system that seems to harass the victim.

Our judiciary, law, government, police cannot ensure that our rights will always be safeguarded. We know how money, status and power prevail over our rights. We have seen how those that have harmed and killed whistle blowers and RTI activists have not been brought to book. Manjunath Shanmugam and Satyendra Dubey were brazenly killed for trying to stop corrupt practices. 

When in 1990, Ruchika Girhotra, 14, of Haryana, molested by the Inspector General of Police, SPS Rathore, made a complaint, she, her family and friends, were so harassed by the police that she committed suicide. It took almost 20 years before Rathore was pronounced guilty and given a diminutive sentence. Ruchika’s friend and eyewitness, Aradhana Prakash, did not buckle under the threats and fought for justice for her friend till the case was closed two decades later. But she is among the brave hearts that show exemplary, extraordinary courage. Normally, life demands less from us. By conceding our right to speak up against little wrongs like when cable TV, water supply, auto rickshaw unions act like mafia and render our rights ineffective, we encourage wrongdoers and set a vicious cycle of crime into motion.

A Mumbai housing society where people have been living and paying property and corporation taxes for 23 years has been declared unauthorised and is facing the threat of demolition. While the defaulting builders have absconded, the residents face an uncertain future. In the meanwhile, there are a hundred other illegal structures that are allowed construction so money can be made. How do we bear such skewed forms of legality?

Speak up, speak out

“Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonour and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got... Just refuse to bear them.” (William Faulkner).

V S Sunder, who has raised his voice against the inflexibility and insensitivity with which people with disabilities are treated, recounts incident after incident of blatant disregard of their rights. Why should a person on wheelchair have to stand up for security check at the airport? Why should not the companion be allowed to accompany them? Why must the person be physically lifted to a seat somewhere in the middle of the aircraft? Why must all the questions be directed to their escort?

When a queue breaker comes barging in to get served first, we have the option to remind them politely; demand they come in line; or fume and do nothing about it. A person who has the audacity to break queue, will most likely not be affected by any of this and nothing will be achieved. If, however, the person at the counter refuses to take the order of the queue breaker, would anyone break the queue in the first place? Those in authority, those in charge, must act with fairness, always.

Humiliation and a sense of wrong made Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela fight injustice. When Rosa Parks was asked if she had not given her bus seat to a white because she was tired, she said, “No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

As Bangalore grapples with a population explosion that has its limited resources stretched to seams, we face acute problems of garbage disposal, water shortage, dumping of sewage water into lakes and contamination of water pipelines, chaotic traffic, missing pavements, indiscriminate tree cutting leading to loss of the green cover and rise in temperatures; superfluous, shoddily made, bumpy flyovers, the usefulness of which shall never be questioned; the buses that move and stop arbitrarily jamming traffic; the underpasses that have, despite protests, been dug and then abandoned following PILs, rendering the roads unusable; randomly constructed medians with no storm water outlets leading to flooding of roads after a 10-minute shower, we do nothing more than sigh.

The bellicose & the nosy parkers

Our anger and frustration with a system we cannot change surfaces in undesirable ways — road rage and unnecessary fights with fellow citizens. We live in an atmosphere of distrust, believing everyone is out to cheat and harm us. On an evening out, as we parked into an empty slot, two vociferous women with children came charging and began to fight because apparently we had parked where they were planning to. Since our action was unintentional and without malice, we waited while they vented. I wondered about those women starting off an outing with so much anger. What were the children accompanying them thinking and assimilating? Couldn’t they, if they felt wronged in the situation, have dealt with it with less acridity? Had they approached us with a ‘we had wanted to park here, could you park elsewhere?’ I doubt we would have refused.

Keerti, a friend who will go out of her way to ask after and help others, often wonders if people think of her as intrusive. Asking your neighbours unnecessary personal details is intrusive, being alert is not. If, for example, neighbours had been a little vigilant, would those poor kids who had been holed up in a Jaipur house, have gone unnoticed? Nearly 50 children, aged between 5 and 17, were kept in two illegal children’s homes in a residential colony for months with little food and in pathetic living conditions and no one noticed?

A burgeoning population of upwardly mobile, disposable-income-equipped middle class that can buy its safety and security, peace and distance, is increasingly seeking an easy way out, creating an insulated world for itself. If we can’t deal with apathetic agencies, we hire agents to get jobs done; if we can’t send our kids in unsafe school buses, we send them in chauffeur-driven cars; if we can’t send them to colleges for fear of ragging, we send them abroad or to the five-star institutions that offer mineral water and airconditioned hostels; if roads are unwalkable, we step out in cars. This disengagement with society leads to more blatant abuse of our rights. We continue to pay taxes towards infrastructure, public security, services like roads, streetlights, garbage collection, health services, preservation of monuments, emergency and disaster relief, but cannot be bothered by the sordid state of these.

Winds of change

In Bangalore, illegal dumping of construction material into Bellandur Lake at night was reported by irate residents and was stopped. But the audacity with which people do and get away with wrong because they are rarely punished, and because of the powerful that back them, stops us from making the effort and risk courting danger.

But how can we dream of change if we continue to keep silent? Change is not made without inconvenience. Complaining from the margins will not do. Social change does not require superheroes. We can each aim for a ripple effect — help one person and it helps their family, the community, and person by person, we help the world; set one thing right; or fight for that one cause that moves us. Each one of us has the power to make some impact.

As the American biologist E O Wilson famously said, “We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesisers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.” Information is key — to be aware of our own and other people’s rights, and to know what to do when — how to administer first aid, help accident victims, who to inform in case of an accident, fallen electric wires, cutting of trees, garbage or debris being dumped, kids employed, or when house-help is ill-treated. Why let the wrong prevail? Why not speak up for what is right, always and every time?

What women want!

“Come, let’s go,” said Papa one afternoon and I, nine-ish or littler, tagged along, like I always did. The grave air about him told me we were going for something not very pleasant but I didn’t ask, like I never did. Papa was more ‘show’ than ‘tell’. 

We stopped near the Polytechnic College boy’s hostel. It was on the way to our home atop Shyamala Hills.  There were tea shacks at the crossroads. We waited a little distance away. Suddenly, Papa asking me to ‘stay’ there, rushed to the tea shacks. My elder sister who used to get down from bus there on her way back from college had also materialized on the scene. Next, I saw Papa holding a boy’s hand. There was some action, some words spoken, some onlookers and then Papa and sister came back to collect me and we all went home.

A matter of (eve) teasing, ched-chad was thus settled.

Growing up in a small town, we girls, kind of knew how to ‘deal’ with boys. With silence. Ignore, keep a low profile, don’t go to crowded places, don’t go to secluded places, don’t draw attention to you, don’t wear what fellow Bhopalies wouldn’t…

Predators came as the afternoon uncle to push the swing and by and by had you sit on his lap; the grey-haired gentleman who floored you with his impeccable English, his world tours, then stooped down; the men servants who could be trusted with the house keys but not with the girls of the house.

We wore skirts that had to be four-inches above the knee in the girls’ school but as soon as we joined a co-educational college, were required to cover up -- wear a salwar-kameez-dupatta. I was stepping out in a pair of jeans one evening, when Papa quietly said that he was no longer strong enough to go out and fight people. I went back in and changed.

Like most other girls in the city, I rode a two-wheeler to college. One evening, returning after dark from my French class, a group of men in a car waylaid me. Quick thinking and a quicker bike saved me but before I could say sacré bleu a question mark attached itself next to my French classes till a male classmate offered to accompany me back home every day -- he on his bike, I on mine. Every time he bunked class, I had to too. In it together, like conjoined twins.

Next stop -- Delhi. Danger stared dangerously, daringly on Dilli dil walon ki roads. On the way to work one morning, I was waiting for an auto. One stopped and I got in. When I told him where I wanted to go, he said, “I’m not going there. I just picked you because I like you.” Too scared to react, I let him take me where he left me and then told my friend. “Didn’t you slap him?” he asked angrily. Less angry, he asked, “Have you no sense? What stopped you from getting down?”

Fear? Embarrassment? What?

Red Line buses were a different planet – a free for all, groping, pinching, touching neighbourhood where desperate men let their wild fantasies loose. The details are too graphic for this space. Reckless driving was a minor crime. Reporting it did not, as a rule, call attention to the complainant. But it did. A few days after I reported a Red Line bus, registration number et all, for reckless driving in a letter to editor, it made headline news. The Police arrested the driver and were at my door to take my statement and proceed with the case.

Suddenly, I became the perpetrator of the misdeed, the villain of the piece, peace-pincher, trouble architect, the disrupter of life’s steady goings on.

What was the need? Why couldn't I keep my big mouth shut? Did I not know what the driver-kind can do?  Had I thought of my little girl? What if they kidnap her? Someone could just  throw acid on my face and disappear and everything would be OVER.

Now I knew real fear. I withdrew. The Police was angry with me. I was angry with me too. But I was a woman first. Anger I could live with. A small price to pay for not being violated. A woman, so like a traffic law.

So what has changed in four decades for me? Little. On the way back from the airport, alone in a cab (the Airport Taxi at that), I was again a petrified, little girl not knowing what to do when mid way (the 60-km stretch takes one and a half hours) the cabbie first seemed to lean back and relax, then lifted his pants to his knees and above. He stretched himself, rubbed his ankles, patted his thighs. Terrifyingly intimidated, I told myself, dirty is in the eyes of the beholder; that my fear was unfounded and he innocent, only uncouth.

I muttered a weak, “Why don’t you drive properly?” Everyone knows what cabbies say to that. I called husband and code-worded my fear. He asked me to get off. Get off? In the middle of nowhere? Stand on the highway with my bags and beg some auto to go my way? And what to tell this guy? How to not create a scene, feel helpless and mouth the dirty? I sat put.

Women are a broad spectrum group. I’m neither among those that’ll be happy with women’s day free manicures, show window’s amazing ingenuity in reflecting pink through next-to-nothing clothing or hassling men to make anniversaries/women’s day/valentine’s day special; nor among the coin-size bindi-ed, handloom sari-ed, Arnab Goswami-silencing ones. I am not a woman of extraordinary courage and I’m in majority. We’re the ones that are walking through life on an Alert mode forever.

So I welcome the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill 2013 passed in the Lok Sabha earlier in March. It makes acid throwing, stalking, trafficking, employing a trafficked person, voyeurism (making videos) punishable offences. A policeman who does not take a rape complaint also faces jail now.

The 24x7 news channels hyperventilated and singularly dismissed the new bill on the only two issues it did not address.

I don’t understand marital rape. It plain amounts to domestic violence, sexual abuse. It is explained as women forced to have sex by their husband, ex-husbands, partners. The latter two are categories of ‘marital’? Preeti Jain crying ‘rape’? Secondly, we cannot make laws on statistics alone. Tomorrow, in a more equal society, will there be husband-rape? Or will a man have to suffer in silence because of his macho image? Spousal rape makes little sense because one doesn't just keep living with a rapist.  

The lowering of age of consensual sex… I was ‘hmm…’ about this till I read this, “a 17 year old who is a victim of sexual offense committed by another 17 year old will be treated as an adult victim/witness while the perpetrator will be tried as a child under the Juvenile Justice Act.” (Tulir - Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse). And of course, it has been pointed out that victims of rape in this 16-18 age-group would be coerced to admit it was consensual.

Protesting sisters and (their) bhai-logs in armbands, please take a rest and READ the amendment. Do not trust the Shankar Breathless Mahadevanesque newschannels to give you everything on a pink platter. If you then need a new cause, here’s one I found, Wiki tells: “In Taiwan, International Women's Day is marked by the annual release of a government survey on women's waist sizes, accompanied by warnings that weight gain can pose a hazard to women's health.”  Don’t you smell political conspiracy, hidden agenda, and vote-bank politics behind our government’s blatant disregard of this crucial step towards women’s safety?  

At one with the world

You are here: Home » Supplements » Sunday Herald » At one with the world Shefali Tripathi Mehta, March 10, 2013

Points to ponder

In times when one has to push others to get ahead, we leave the wounded behind because they will only slow us down. Conditions that disable others are also those that we carry in our hearts — our attitudes and preconceived notions. But, isn’t it time we ensured that no one’s left behind, wonders Shefali Tripathi Mehta

A friend who adopted a baby was told by every well-wisher to ‘exchange’ the child when she was discovered to have a hearing disability. A medical team conducting a survey of children in a village stopped at a home with several kids. “How many children?” they asked. “One,” the man of the house replied. “And the rest?” “They are girls.”

Girls — unaccounted for. People with disability — unaccounted for. And like them, other disadvantaged sections of our society that we seem to have turned away from — the aged, the poor, the victims of our tardy justice system or of horrific violence, and their families.

In times when one has to shout to be heard, push others to get ahead, we leave the wounded behind because they will only slow us down. There are barriers in their participation and contribution to the family, community and society. Because they are also more dependent on others, they are susceptible to neglect, abuse and violation of their rights. Rights and laws can only provide safeguards, but the reality of being of little or no consequence is heartbreaking. These people, often referred to as ‘second-class citizens’, are considered less valuable for the society. This reflects in our thinking and our attitude towards them.

Imagine walking a few steps on a pavement blindfolded? This is how difficult life is for people with disabilities, and the graying population, in our country. But we cannot take on their battles. These people are too far gone in the periphery of our reality for us to bother. We are a country where the right of way belongs to big cars and not pedestrians; where ambulances blare their sirens to unhearing, uncaring motorists; where women of less means die giving birth to children outside hospitals that close their doors on them; where we shamelessly park in disabled parking bays, and sit while the aged stand for their turns in doctors’ waiting rooms.

Conditions that disable others are also those that we carry in our hearts — our attitudes, preconceived notions about physical disability and mental illnesses, our total neglect of old age and poverty. We disable them with archaic laws, rigid education system, partisan employment policies, disparate judicial system, apathetic infrastructure and town planning.

We grew up immune to the tragedies of the ‘lesser-ones’ — made fun of those with mental illnesses; in school, children with polio sat in class during games; the blind came home to weave chairs; the house-help ate leftovers; our films and television introduced people with mental illnesses for comedy, and those with physical disability made extraordinary sacrifices — nothing came close to reality. Nothing in later life taught us better, and we continue to fail in sensitising our children.

Family matters

Eight-year-old Anita is visually-impaired and from a family with limited means. Her parents demonstrated extraordinary support and positive attitude by travelling daily to the nearest town for her rehabilitation. Anita was only five and travelled four hours daily to learn Braille, Abacus and Taylor Frame (used by people with visual impairment to do Math). She is now studying in class three in an inclusive school. Her mother has learnt Braille so that she can support and help her daughter.

The family system that is our boon is our bane too. Often, the first barrier a person with disability encounters is his own family which lives in denial of the disability. They cannot accept that their child has a special need and early intervention may enable the child to live a less-dependent, fuller life.

Many families discriminate among their children too — spending more on the normal child’s education and not finding the same ‘investment’ worthwhile for the child with disability. These are attitudes born out of age-old traditions and culture that we have not been able to shake off with awareness in a much advanced world. The families of those with mental illnesses and physical disabilities on the one hand struggle to cope with the person’s special needs — the stress of providing care, treatment, emotional support; disruption of daily schedules, family routines, work and leisure; and on the other, also face social ostracism. It is not they, but we, who are unfortunate for our blinkered thinking and regressive attitudes.

A study by Help Age India, conducted across 20 cities, has found that almost one in three of our elderly face abuse, most often by their own children. Urban, middle-class, working couples who have parents keeping their house and kids, begin to resent their presence once they have outlived their usefulness and are themselves in need of care.

Crippling culture

Disabled children are buried up to their necks during solar eclipses; wailing infants are tossed from temple tops to be caught in blankets to bring health and luck; the belief in karma leads to the superstition that disability is a result of the sins in past life. Societal attitudes towards disability, old age or differences of any kind range from neglect and overprotection to sympathy.

A chartered bus with everyone seated had one last passenger — an elderly man. Passengers squirmed in their seats, but offering seat to others in chartered buses is not a norm. Then, a woman got up and offered her seat to him. It took her some courage to get over the awkwardness, but she said she thought of her own father and hoped in return someone would do the same for him. 

Even the educated and good-hearted are awkward and uncomfortable around someone with a disability because we have not been sensitised to understand their needs and appreciate their abilities. We have a culture of helping that only makes the less-abled dependent. “You can’t do this”, “You won’t be able to go there” are barriers we create for them. People often address the attendant of a person with disability instead of talking to them directly; they talk louder to a blind person; and often begin to lead someone or push a wheelchair without first asking. Well-meaning though we may be, why does regard for human dignity seem less significant in such situations?

It is unfortunate that the barriers in inclusive education are not just the schools that refuse admission to children with disability citing lack of facilities and trained staff, but also parents of ‘normal’ kids. We may cry rivers watching a Tare Zameen Par, but the same empathy does not move us in real life.

Superstition sanctions families to abandon their elderly women and widows at the Kumbh melas. The belief that those who die in holy cities go straight to heaven cloaks their dark intent, and is responsible for the abandonment of an estimated 10,000 women on the streets of Benares. Many women admitted to hospitals for treatment of TB, leprosy, depression or other mental illnesses are never accepted back into their families. Many well-off families brazenly deny their women treatment for cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. 

Broken bridges

A few years ago, pedestrian crossings at busy junctions in Mumbai were installed with audible signals designed for the visually impaired, but had to be silenced because residents complained of the noise. Independent, dignified life for a person with disability in India is still a dream. Our cities are flooded by rains, our public transport has to be availed of by running, climbing and finding a foothold, commuters hang on foot boards of buses and local trains, our disappearing pavements are broken, blocked with stumps of trees, debris and filth, and public disabled toilets are nonexistent.

Hotels, restaurants, parks, historical sites, banks, post offices, railway stations and libraries are not barrier-free spaces for people with disabilities or the aged. How easy is it for a blind person to eat at a restaurant? For a wheelchair user to go to the bank? For an aged person to get a lower berth on the train?

A survey last year revealed that in the country’s capital, 37 per cent government schools did not have clean toilets, leaving students with no option but to urinate in the open. Parents are reluctant to send their children, particularly girls, to schools where basic toilet facilities are not available. Lack of basic facilities in schools is a violation of the right to free and compulsory education guaranteed in the Indian Constitution.

Laws that violate

The Right to Education and the midday meal are legal entitlements in our country where reportedly lower caste children are still made to sit away from the rest, scolded, beaten, made to do menial chores by teachers, and not allowed to drink water from the same tap as the rest. The rigid systems of admissions, curriculum, and evaluation; and the lack of awareness among the school authorities, teachers, students and parents of non-disabled or privileged children make integration very difficult.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), the Right to Education (RTE), the National Food Security Act, the Disability Discrimination Act are all steps to bring to the mainstream those who have been left out, but the problems are those of implementation, of the absence of punishment for those that deprive others of their rightful benefits. The State that is steeped in blatant corruption at every level can offer redress only by creating honest channels of execution of these schemes and ensuring that the greedy middlemen do not siphon off taxpayers’ money and deprive the genuine beneficiaries.

Jeeja Ghosh, Head of Advocacy and Disability Studies at the Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy (IICP), and a frequent flier, was made to get off a plane by the pilot because she has cerebral palsy. Not a stray occurrence of discrimination, these incidents happen because there are no deterrents, no exemplary punishment for the perpetrators.

These disadvantaged groups are considered low on the hierarchy of concerns of the policy makers and votebank politicians. It is imperative for the disadvantaged groups to be included in the census and the election processes so that they are accounted for in future policies, action plans and allocation of resources.

Recently in Bangalore, 5,000 residents of the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) had their homes demolished overnight, and were rendered homeless, when the government entered into a public-private partnership to develop the land occupied by them. With corruption so rampant in public departments, there is no certainty that when the homes are ready, any of these original dwellers will be resettled there. Development at the cost of the weaker sections of society is pointless as it only serves to widen social disparity. So while it may be argued that the proposed business establishment, namely a mall, that will come up in the area will create more jobs for these evictees, we also know of the poor working conditions and exploitation that takes place at these low-level, private enterprise jobs. If, on the other hand, the government were to undertake the development project, while it may have been able to safeguard people’s rights to some extent, the problems would be different — poor services, corruption, loss and wastage of public money.

Corruption annuls every effort towards development. We pay taxes for motorable roads, walkable pavements, public transport, safety and security of life and property, but the poor services and facilities the government provides are of little use to its physically and economically vulnerable citizens.

Islands of hope

“I am what I am because of who we all are” — this is the Ubuntu philosophy of the South Africans, the ‘essence of being human’, that no one exists in isolation. So, for every incident of government-run hospitals refusing admission to pregnant women, critically sick or injured, there are people like the autorickshaw driver in Bangalore who provides free transport for pregnant women to hospital.

For every child with disability who is denied admission into mainstream schools, there is one Mrs Mittal, a housewife and volunteer at an NGO who, when she could not spend the number of hours the student with visual disability she was reading for, needed, invited him to her home to help him study while she did her chores. She also encouraged her neighbours to read to him. This helped the student to complete his post-graduation and qualify for the Public Service Commission examination. For every one who thinks their life is hopeless, there is a Swapna, a young widow in a hamlet near Bangalore, who learned and passed on English and computer skills to underprivileged children. Working at the One Billion Literates Foundation, she turned her tragedy into inspiration for several others.

When we see these people with limited means doing their bit, we must know that it is not time or resources we are short of, just the intent. Life demands a lot from each one of us, a little more from some others. Everyone has their own struggles, their own challenges to overcome, which is reason enough for us to be kind to each other; to teach our kids to not laugh at people with mental illnesses, or bully the slow learner in class; to give the lower berth on the train to the elderly; to read out and write an exam for those with physical disabilities. 

Government can make policies, pass laws, but the shortfalls can only be filled by us. The government is us, the corrupt babus, the middlemen, the profit-making, self-serving public contractors are us. It is for us to reach out to our fellow human beings and create an inclusive society. It is time to move the focus from charity to rights, from sympathy to equality.

Those that have been left out too have to stand up to be counted, claim their place in the family, society and world. There is no dearth of positive examples of people who have displayed extraordinary grit and determination in overcoming their disability, their economic challenges, to become a part of the mainstream, to be of value to society. Those who realise their potential, merit social respect. Each one can contribute in some way. Technology continues to provide new aids to simplify life for the disabled, the aged, the poor. It will eventually reach and impact all. But for human love and care to stay in short supply would be our collective shame.