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chhotray

chhotray
hembram , odisha

Chhotray Hembram (18) poses in front of his hut, smiling at the camera. The ground is uneven and muddy with a few stones here and there. Chhotray’s cropped hair is black but a large patch of hair on the top of his head is a coppery brown. He wears a blue half-sleeve checked shirt and black cotton-knit shorts with two orange stripes running along the thigh. His legs have no feet and he supports his body on his kneecaps which rest on black sandals. The mud hut has a dried grass thatch and two doorways. The walls are painted in two broad horizontal panels one above the other. The bottom panel is the brownish colour of mud and the upper panel is white. A narrow green stripe divides the two panels. Behind the hut are trees that form part of a forest stretching into the distance.
Chhotray in a pinkish red full-sleeved shirt and black cotton-knit shorts is kneeling on muddy ground, scattering rice grains before three hens. In his left hand he holds a small aluminium plate filled with grain. He is stretching out his right hand with palm slightly folded and thumb touching the fingers. In front of him there is a black hen, a brown hen, and a white hen with three little white chicks. There are lush green plants in the background.
Chhotray wearing plain black shorts and a faded, dark green, full-sleeve T-shirt with three buttons down the front is sitting cross-legged on the mud floor of a room. There is a small pile of large green leaves in front of him, to be made into leaf plates. He holds a pack of leaves in his left hand and is picking up a leaf from the pile with his right hand. Next to the pile there is an upside-down cane basket. Several dry clothes hang on a clothesline stretching across the mud wall behind him.
Chhotray wearing a blood-red sleeveless T-shirt and plain black shorts sits cross-legged on the mud floor of a small room. There are three large aluminium cooking pots behind him. In front of him there is a large, dented aluminium pot with a round belly and narrow mouth, an aluminium vessel, one small and one medium-sized steel vessel, and an iron kadai (wok). He is stretching out both hands with palms containing small, round, brownish-green objects.
Chhotray poses with his father, younger sister and little brother sitting on the doorstep of their hut. Chhotray wears a red sleeveless T-shirt and black shorts. His father wears a white half-sleeve shirt and dhoti. The boy wears green shorts and blue shirt. The girl wears a sleeveless, knee-length, multi-layered, mushroom-pink frock with the outer layer made of a lacy embroidered material. She is the only one smiling at the camera.
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“What can a disabled person do?”

The logistics of interviewing 18-year-old Chhotray Hembram from Odisha resembled a military operation. You are already familiar with our modus operandi: Vicky travels far, wide and deep for a photo shoot of a PwD (Person with Disability) and passes on their phone number to the writing team. In 2021 he burrowed really deep to capture Chhotray who lives in the tribal region of Ghatkuanri (population roughly 700) in Bangiriposi tehsil, Brahmangan gram panchayat, Mayurbhanj district.
 
Chhotray was supposed to speak to us on the phone of his ‘neighbour’ (it was unclear how distant he was from Chhotray’s hut). Finding a writer who could speak Odiya was the least of our problems; he simply could not get through to the neighbour. Vicky sought the help of a woman working for an NGO. Then we discovered that Ghatkuanri was a dead zone, cellphone-wise. No signal. So the woman would have to transport Chhotray more than 25 km to the nearest town where ‘network’ is available – Bangiriposi. 
 
Vicky arranged a suitable date and time with the NGO woman. Our writer called her after they reached Bangiriposi but then another problem cropped up. Chottray had never in his life used a mobile, so he didn’t know how to speak into one! The woman acted as the intermediary but she was in a hurry: she had places to go, things to do. Our writer could scrape together just a few facts.
 
Chhotray’s father is a daily wage labourer and when he isn’t going into the jungle he works in someone’s field or farm. One winter’s night, when Chhotray was young, he was sleeping next to the lit, earthen chulha (firewood stove) as usual. His parents had warmed their innards with some country liquor and were fast asleep. The sleeping child’s feet touched the flames and caught fire. The couple did not hear his screams in time to rescue him. Both feet were severely damaged.
 
Chhotray has been walking on his knees ever since. His education ground to a halt. His younger siblings go to school but he doesn’t know which grades they’re in. Besides doing household chores like feeding and tending to the chickens and farm animals, he sometimes makes and sells leaf plates. There is a weekly market in the village where he has created a makeshift table from bamboo, and this ‘stall’ is where he sells from. He wishes to open a vegetable or grocery shop near his house; this again would be a rudimentary structure with thatched or tarpaulin roof supported by bamboo poles, and a table on which items for sale are placed. He says that he can grow some vegetables and procure the rest from Bangiriposi.
 
When asked what he does in his spare time he replies, “What can a disabled person do?” It was as if we had asked an irrelevant question. He used to help a shopkeeper nearby who gave out public address systems (mikes and so forth) on hire. Occasionally Chhotray uses his catapult to bring down mangoes and other fruits, or to kill birds which he then eats. The NGO woman interrupted at this point to harangue him on the importance of conserving birdlife. Poor Chhotray said apologetically, “Last year I killed only one bird!”
 
We have many answers to Chhotray’s rhetorical question, “What can a disabled person do?” But those answers make sense only if the right kind of assistance is able to reach PwDs even in the least accessible corners of the country. Vicky contacted Punyasloka Panda, Ashoka University alumnus and a core team member of Youth for Sustainability India Alliance, who is a trained career counsellor. Towards the end of 2022 Punya made the three-day journey to get acquainted with Chhotray’s environment and realised that simply giving him a lump sum to set up a grocery shop was not feasible. In this region of endemic poverty, there are apparently three or four pairs of eager hands waiting to grasp the money! In fact his family seems none too keen to see him financially independent and a frustrated Chhotray is reportedly yielding to addiction.

Punya is planning yet another trip to Ghatkuanri. He is not ready to give up on this young man whose predicament cannot be resolved through quick-fix solutions but only through different forms of appropriate support.


Photos:

Vicky Roy

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