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ramji

ramji
kumar , bihar

Ramji Kumar (11) is squatting in the middle of many periwinkle plants. They have green leaves in the shape of tennis racquets and flowers with five petals. Some plants have pink flowers and some, white. Ramji’s cropped hair is combed towards the forehead. He wears grey shorts and a full-sleeved turquoise blue sweatshirt.
Ramji, wearing his blue shirt and grey shorts, is sitting on a cotton rug in a room. He is grinning as he faces the camera with legs stretched out. He holds two small yellow balls together in his hands. On each ball is a black smiley emoji. The rug has pattern of golden brown motifs on an emerald green background. There are many plastic rectangular building blocks scattered around him. They are coloured red, green, orange, blue and yellow.
Ramji wearing grey shorts and a sky blue half-sleeved shirt stands in front of a building with his arms by his sides. The ground is paved with concrete. The façade of the building is sky blue. A row of periwinkle plants with pink flowers runs alongside the front wall.
A grinning Ramji wearing his sky blue shirt and grey shorts sits in a brown wooden chair in a corridor. The floor is beige and the corridor walls are light green with a broad, dark green horizontal panel skirting the bottom.
Ramji sits between his parents on a bed. All of them sit cross-legged. The mattress is covered with a fabric in small red and black checks. Ramji’s father Kanahya Parshad (31) wears a full-sleeved light blue shirt and grey trousers. Ramji wears his sky blue shirt and grey shorts. His mother Sharita Devi (28) wears a royal blue sari printed with golden yellow sunflowers and a red blouse. She has draped her sari pallu over her head. She wears a small nose stud, red and golden bangles on her wrists, and red sindoor in the centre parting of her hair. In the pista green wall behind them there is a window with rose pink curtains drawn over it.
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“I like playing with toys and eating biscuits”

Ramji Kumar (11) from East Champaran in Motihari district, Bihar can only say a few words but like any other child he is full of glee when surrounded by playthings. Photographer Vicky Roy captured him at Cheshta, handling colourful balls and building blocks that his parents could never afford to buy for him.
 
Cheshta, an acronym for Centre for Harmony, Education, Social action, Health and Training Activities, is located in Raxaul “just walking distance from the Indo-Nepal border”, says its director Gracy Kodiyan Ouseph, known simply as Sister Grace. Despite being a small NGO Cheshta manages to support 300 children with disabilities, who have Cerebral Palsy (CP), like Ramji, or Intellectual Disability (ID) or different physical and developmental disabilities.
 
Besides providing day care and nutrition, Cheshta staff also provides home care by visiting children unable to move out of their houses, offering physiotherapy for the kids and counselling for the parents. “Most of the parents are impoverished and only capable of thumbprint signatures,” says Sister Grace. Ramji’s parents Kanahya Parshad (31) and Sharita Devi (28) are no different, being deprived of literacy and formal education. Kanahya says he works on other people’s fields for 10 to 15 days a month on a daily wage of ₹100, which is barely enough to feed himself, his wife and three sons. Ramji’s disability certificate entitles him to a government pension of ₹400 per month.
 
Ramji, whose intensifying CP symptoms confined him to bed for a year, is able to walk with some difficulty and his severe speech impairment has marginally improved, Sister Grace informs us. Kanahya says his eldest son Shivkumar, who is around twelve and a half, also faces challenges with speech and comprehension but nevertheless he studies in a government school in Class 6. His younger brother, Bharat Kumar, who is non-disabled, also goes to the same government school. Kanahya says the schoolmaster has enrolled Ramji as well but “he cries if he is forced to go” – and quite naturally, too, for what would he do there except mark attendance? His mother helps him take care of his daily needs such as eating and bathing. Kanahya says besides the routine diet of rice and dal, Ramji relishes biscuits. He goes to the neighbour’s house to watch TV.
 
Sister Grace says she wishes she could help the hundreds of other disabled children in the region. Cheshta has few donors, and is doing the best possible for the most deprived among us.

Photos:

Vicky Roy

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