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nazira

nazira
begom , assam

Mid shot of Nazira Begom (24) standing outdoors with arms akimbo and hands resting on her waist. She wears a frock printed in a swirly design of sky blue and navy blue. It has butterfly sleeves and smocking on the front. Her hair has a centre parting and is tied behind her back. On her head there is a large conical hat made of light brown bamboo cane. She is flanked by a narrow tree trunk on either side.
Nazira stands in the front door of her house. The façade is made of woven brown bamboo cane and the doorway is made of bamboo poles. Nazira wears a navy blue knee-length skirt with three layered frills and a white short top with blue polka dots. The top has elbow-length puffed sleeves, is gathered at the waist, and ends in a broad frill.
Nazira wearing a pale sky blue calf-length frock is sitting on a stool, feeding a calf a few straws of hay. She is in a small room with plain brick walls and a mud floor. There is a small pile of beige-coloured hay at her feet. The grey calf has a white under-belly and is around four feet tall. It is tied to the stout leg of a crude wooden table by a blue plastic rope. A small black-and-white goat kid is lying down next to the table leg.
Nazira wearing a dark purple sleeveless frock sits on the edge of a cot. The cot, which occupies a corner of a room, is covered with a brown woven bamboo mat. In her right hand she holds a hand fan made of bamboo cane. The large, circular fan has a crisscross pattern of purple on a plain beige background. The walls are plain red brick with the greyish green cement showing. The left wall is made of laterite bricks. The right wall has kiln-baked bricks stamped with INDIA in block letters.
Nazira poses with her family sitting in a row on a plain wooden cot in a room with bare red brick walls. From left to right: father Shihab-uddin (59), mother Liliban-nessa (50), Nazira, sister Azmira Khatun (17) and brother Abdul Jaleel (18). Shihab-uddin wears a full-sleeved shirt in a black and beige plaid check pattern, and a sky-blue checked dhoti. He has a balding head, white thick full beard and salt-and-pepper moustache. Liliban wears a sari in red and black stripes printed with gold-coloured motifs. Her sari pallu is draped over her head and across her shoulders to cover her chest. Nazira wears her navy blue skirt and polka-dotted top. Azmira wears an olive-green headscarf and a white, three-fourth-sleeved, full-length kameez with pink panels on the front and at the sleeve edges. Abdul wears a white T-shirt and a dhoti in white horizontal stripes on a dark grey background. He has thick black hair, a moustache and a narrow strip of beard that stretches from his ears to his chin.
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“I like to play with children. And I simply must have betel nuts and leaves to chew”


Behara Part IV is a village in Cachar district, Assam. With around 850 homes and a population of 5,000, it is 28 km from Silchar. Cachar is one of the most flood-prone districts in Assam. Flooding and displacement of people is an annual occurrence and 2022 was when it last experienced a catastrophic flood.
 
What happens to persons with disabilities (PwD) in disasters such as floods? A disaster management plan is supposed to be put in place to rescue PwD but we suspect that this law is more honoured in the breach than in the observance.
 
In Behara Part IV there are 30 to 40 persons with disabilities, according to social worker Arif-uddin Choudhury. Arif, who has been doing social work in the area for many years, took Vicky Roy to the homes of PwD for his photo shoot. One of them was Nazira Begom (24), the daughter of Shihab-uddin (59) and Liliban-nessa (50) who have three other children: Abdul Kadeer (30), Abdul Jaleel (18) and Azmira Khatun (17). Shihab-uddin, a cart-puller, and Kadeer, a daily-wage worker, are the sole earning members of the family. Their house has mud floors and walls made of plain red brick and woven bamboo. Even if they could afford to spruce up the place, it would be endangered when the next flood arrives.
 
Nazira’s parents can tell us very little about her disability. She was a year and a half when they took her to Silchar Medical College 28 km away because they sensed she had an issue. She was certified as intellectually disabled but according to them she has always had impaired speech and movement. Does she have cerebral palsy or a purely locomotive problem? Whatever be the disability, given their living conditions, schooling was just a mirage and ‘therapy’ an alien concept. The family does not have a TV or smartphone and hence she has no exposure to the outside world.
 
Nazira’s parents tell us she is able to walk with difficulty but does not seem to be interested in any other activities. If only she had access to a resource centre she could have benefitted from occupational therapy, not to mention physiotherapy for her locomotive needs. As it is, she relies on her parents to perform her daily activities. Her parents say she loves to play with younger kids but sometimes flares up and exhibits violent behaviour. She loves chewing betel nut and betel leaves and gets angry if she does not get them.
 
Shihab and Liliban have the same worry that all parents of disabled children do, whether they live in a penthouse or an outhouse: what will happen to her after we die? Unless Behara Part IV undergoes a radical transformation, its dozens of PwD would be no better off than Nazira when it comes to access to support systems for the disabled.


Photos:

Vicky Roy

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