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priya

priya
begum
laskar , assam

Priya Begum Laskar (14) sits cross-legged on a bed, crouching forward slightly and raising her head to look straight at the camera. She wears a white T-shirt and sky blue jeans. Her hair is tied back and she wears a white plastic headband. The mattress is covered with a bedsheet in small checks of red, white and yellow. Priya’s left arm is folded at the elbow and tucked into her right armpit. She holds a pen in her right hand which rests on an open notebook. Just above it there is an open book with illustrations and printed text.
Mid shot of Priya standing in the garden next to a marigold bush. She wears a red top with short sleeves and round neck. There are two blue lines crisscrossing the chest area. The bush reaches chest high and is dotted with orange marigold flowers. She is stretching out both arms to pluck a flower in each hand.
Priya sits cross-legged on a brown wooden bed on which a beige woven straw mat has been spread out over the mattress. She wears her red top with sky blue jeans. There is a large shallow steel plate filled with pinkish shallots next to her left knee. Two small round-bottomed steel vessels filled with shallots are placed next to her right knee. She is picking up a shallot from one of the vessels. Behind her there is a white wall rack with three shelves. The middle shelf contains four aluminium woks of different sizes placed upside down next to each other. It also contains a steel flask and several plastic bottles.
Priya sits outdoors on a raised surface hidden by her body and knee-length frock. With her knees spread apart she cuddles a duck on her lap. The duck has coffee brown and white feathers and orange beak and feet. Priya’s frock is printed in a design of indigo blue and white. It has a square neck and elbow-length sleeves. Just behind her is a fence made of crisscrossing bamboo poles. Green creepers are entwined around some of the upright poles.
Priya and her family pose in a room with pink walls and with the floor in a pattern of small red and white diamonds. Priya stands to the extreme left. Next to her, her mother Baby Begum Laskar (41) and father Joynal Hussain Laskar (47) sit on the sill of an open doorway with a semi-circular top. Her sister Jia Begum (23) stands behind the parents in the doorway. Priya wears her indigo and white frock. She has clasped her hands in front of her. Baby wears a black full-length nighty with two alternating vertical panels; one panel has red and yellow flowers and the other is plain red. She wears a red printed dupatta wrapped around her head and shoulders, covering her upper body. Joynal wears a full-sleeved shirt in black and white plaid checks and grey trousers. Jia wears a crimson salwar with short sleeves. She has wrapped a scarf around her head and shoulders; it is black with a red and yellow batik print.
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“I can’t speak but I can read and I like to study. I want to learn to cycle like my father”

Joynal Hussain Laskar (47) from Kanakpur village in Assam’s Cachar district earns his living selling imitation jewellery and bangles, pedalling his bicycle across nearby villages. When he returns home at night around 9.30-10, weary from cycling all day in the sun, his younger daughter Priya Begum (14) is there to welcome him. Tenderly wiping the sweat from his face with her dress, she brings him water to drink and insists that he sit down to eat.
 
“She wants to learn how to ride a cycle and even an e-rickshaw,” says Joynal, his voice brimming with love as he smiles through his tears. “She wants to earn money for me, so I can rest.” Priya has a developmental disability and a speech disorder that renders her non-verbal: she communicates with her family through mime and gestures. A weak bone structure, an unsteady gait, shortness of breath that hampers prolonged walking – none of her multiple disabilities can stifle her exuberance or her eagerness to learn.
 
Priya attends Swastha Sadhana Madhubani LP School, a local government school where she’s in class 5. She reads in silence and copies chapters word for word into her notebook. “She can't read aloud, but her notebooks are full. That's how she learns,” her mother Baby Begum Laskar (41) says proudly. However, there could be a problem if Priya is left unsupervised. Twice she went missing during school hours; once she wandered off while playing and couldn’t find her way back.
 
At home, Priya imbibes lessons informally when her sister Jia (23), who gives tuition to neighbourhood children, includes her in the ‘class’. “She sits with them and listens. She doesn't miss a thing,” says Jia. “Books, pens, and notebooks make her happiest.” During Jia’s board exams, her father met with an accident that injured his legs. “I couldn't prepare well and I failed,” she says. “I began giving tuitions. It's just five students, but it allows me to earn a bit. My favourite subject was always English; I still read storybooks when I find time.”
 
Jia, being nine years older, has always been her sister’s caregiver and protector. “Priya is like my child,” she says. “I have given her baths, fed her, taken her out to play. I continue to look after her.” Jia has postponed her arranged marriage by two years to support her family. “Marriage in our society means draining the savings of our parents and I didn't want that,” she says. “I want to help my sister, and also my mother, who has thyroid and high BP. I buy their medicines with what I earn.”
 
“My two daughters are the two shoulders of mine,” says Joynal. “They are my rays of hope.” On his monthly income of ₹7,000 he also supports his aging parents who live next door. His younger brother, Kamal Hussain Laskar, works as a mechanic in Manipur while his wife and children stay nearby. Joynal handles the shopping, errands and bills for both households before setting out on his long day of hawking. Priya received her disability certificate in 2019 but has yet to receive her disability pension or to benefit from the Assam government’s finance assistance programme Arunodoi. “We applied. No response yet. But I'll keep trying. I need to secure her future for when we are not around anymore,” Joynal says.
 
Priya enjoys listening to music. “She dances till she runs out of breath. Then she sits and just nods to the rhythm,” says Jia. “I am holding onto the hope of hearing her voice someday.” The family clings to the slim hope that doctors have apparently provided them. “They say she might start speaking around the age of 20,” says Baby. “So we wait. Till then we just keep giving her all the love she needs.” But Priya’s lack of speech does not put her at a significant disadvantage in her daily life. “She understands everything,” says Jia. “When she hears the azaan (the mosque call for prayer), she takes a dupatta and asks me to offer namaz. She even imitates me when I pray.”
 
Priya loves spicy food: her mother’s masala chicken and her aunt’s duck egg curry are her favourites. She adores fashionable cotton dresses. When she goes to the market with her sister or father she often points out styles she fancies and waits patiently, because she knows that sooner or later they will bring those dresses home.
 
Joynal has begun thinking of a quieter life. “Cycling every day is becoming harder. After Jia's marriage, I'll try to rent a small shop for my jewellery.” But till then he pedals on, supporting his extended family by the sweat of his brow.

Photos:

Vicky Roy

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