Everyone is Good at Something. 21 Disabilities, 28 States, Infinite Stories

Kutub-ur-Rahman (25), wearing a red T-shirt and a pale blue dhoti printed with dark sky blue horizontal brushstrokes, stands in a doorway of his house. He has cropped hair and a thin, straggly beard that runs along his jawline. The doorway is made of bamboo poles and the wall is of brown rusty corrugated tin sheets. A thick beige grass broom hangs from a bolt on the tin wall. A white rough cotton towel printed with a red design is suspended above the broom.

Kutub, wearing a leaf-green full-sleeved shirt and chocolate brown pants, stands outdoors with greenery in the background. He is standing on a demarcated pathway running down the centre of the ground. The path is filled with large stones and edged with bamboo poles, forming a clear passage for Kutub to walk since he is blind. To the left of the path, beige-coloured dried fish is spread out on a mat. To the right is a woven cane winnow filled with dried chillies. Clotheslines run across the ground to the left and right of Kutub. Multicoloured cotton bedspreads printed with pink, blue and yellow designs and edged with red piping hang on the lines.

Kutub is kneeling on a prayer rug in a room with plain brick walls. He wears a long white kurta with a closed Chinese collar and a white prayer cap. His palms are raised and folded in prayer. The royal blue rug decorated with a golden motif is spread out on a beige, woven cane mat that covers a low brown wooden cot. The walls are made of plain laterite bricks with the greenish cement showing at the joints.

Kutub wearing his red T-shirt and blue dhoti stands in the kitchen in front of three shelves built into the plain cement wall. On the bottom shelf at the left corner there is a wooden trunk partially covered with a cloth. Next to it there are several aluminium lids meant to cover vessels of different sizes. At the right corner there is an iron coconut scraper next to an iron coconut de-husker. In the middle shelf there is a row of aluminium water pots. The top shelf contains transparent plastic bottles and jars, a pressure-cooker, an iron kadai (wok) and aluminium vessels placed upside down.

Kutub and his family members sit cross-legged on a woven cane mat in a room with plain brick walls. From left to right: his niece Afchana Khanom (3), mother Hazira Khatun (62), Kutub, brother’s wife Asnoor Begom (23), and nieces Ruhina Khanom (5 months) and Mahbuba Khanam (4). Afchana and baby Ruhina are bald with shaven heads. Afchana wears a sleeveless knitted cotton vest with navy blue horizontal stripes on a red background, pista green shorts, a small silver ear-stud and a chain made of tiny silver links. A smiling Hazira wears a vermillion sari printed with tiny triangular motifs of green, dark orange and light orange. Her sari pallu is draped over her head and she wears a golden nose stud and silver link chain. A beaming Kutub wears black pants and a tight white T-shirt with thin blue horizontal stripes and a yellow panel around the neck and upper chest. A smiling Asnoor holds Ruhina in her lap. She wears a red sari printed with beige motifs and has draped her pallu over her head. Mahbuba wears the exact same vest as Afchana’s and the centre of her bobbed hair sports a little topknot tied with a red band.

“I never went to school but I would love to study”

When our EGS interviewer first tried to contact Kutub-ur-Rahman (25) from Assam, he and his family were in survival mode. They were struggling to cope with the floods in their village Behara Part IV in Cachar district, Assam. Readers might recall, from our recent story on Nazira Begom, that this village of around 850 homes and a population of 5,000 is situated in a district where flooding and displacement of people is an annual occurrence. Other “significant hazards” in the region are earthquakes and landslides.

Section 8 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPwDA) of 2016 specifically deals with the safety and protection of PwDs in times of disasters. We have a National Disaster Management Authority, and every state is supposed to set up a similar body and prepare a Disaster Management Plan (DMP). In Assam’s DMP, the very last item in its list of 15 aims and objectives says the plan should be made “disability-inclusive” such that “the disabled people can also be given proper attention”. The DMP has a sub-section on “Preparedness and evacuation for disabled” wherein it recommends that search and rescue teams be trained to deal with those with intellectual and mental impairment, and that the physically impaired be provided “whistles as part of emergency preparedness kit”. Relief shelters should be set up using the principles of Universal Design, and mobility aids should be procured as needed, as well as “picture cards to communicate immediate needs of food, water, toilet, medication, etc.” The camps should have mechanisms to ensure the physical safety and security of PwD, especially the women.

Kutub, who was born with 100 per cent blindness, fortunately has a family to safeguard him. His father died when he was three months old. His older brother Rahman (30) is the only earning member in the family which includes his mother Hazira Khatun (62), sister-in-law Asnoor Begom (23) and nieces Mahbuba (4), Afchana (3) and Ruhina (5 months). Social worker Arif Chowdhury took photographer Vicky Roy to their house, a structure made of exposed laterite and brick, bamboo and woven cane, and corrugated tin sheets. “The Assam government gives Kutub a monthly pension of ₹1,200,” said Rahman. “I find it difficult to manage the household on just my daily wages.”

Kutub uses a white cane but says, “I can’t do anything without my mother. I never went to school, but I love to study although I don’t know how to write.” Needless to say he has never encountered Braille and probably hasn’t even heard of it. Whatever knowledge he possesses is through hearing. “I just listen to others and try to remember everything,” he says, adding that a few helpful people taught him the basics. He used to listen to the Quran and therefore picked up Arabic. “I feel very bad when someone tells me, you can’t do anything because you are blind,” he says. “Yes I know I am blind but there must be a reason why I am alive. When I am sitting down, alone, on my own, I try to think about what is my purpose in life.”

Kutub wishes he could do something to repay his mother who has devoted her life to taking care of his daily needs. “No one is ready to give me any kind of job,” he says. Along with this disappointment comes the looming anxiety over what the future holds for him. “My mother is also getting older day by day, so I don’t know what I will do.”

Photos:

kutub-ur-rahman

kutub-ur-rahman , assam

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“I never went to school but I would love to study”

Vicky Roy