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stanzin

stanzin
otsala , ladakh

Close-up of Stanzin Otsala (24) being carried on the bent back of her mother Stanzin Dolma (63). Otsala wears a bright red sweater. Her hair is parted at the side, combed back and held in place with a green hairclip. Dolma’s face is wrinkled and her black hair shows touches of grey at the centre parting. Both of them are smiling.
Mid-shot of Otsala who sits in a chair, hugging a kitten with brown and grey stripes. Otsala wears a red sweater and her mouth is slightly open.
Otsala sits outdoors in a maroon wheelchair with black arm-rests. On the side of the wheelchair in blue lettering is the manufacturing company’s name, ALIMCO, above which is a red, wheelchair symbol. She wears a red sweater and her lap is covered with a pink blanket. On either side are plants with bright green leaves.
Sunlight is streaming through a row of four tall windows into a room with a carpeted floor. The curtain is drawn to the side and it has a pattern of green leaves on a pale pink background. Otsala sits crosslegged on the carpet, wearing a red sweater and violet pyjamas, hugging a light brown teddy-bear. The second window from the left is fully open. Each window has six rectangular, clear glass panes with frames made of a light-coloured wood. In the backdrop is a mountain range below a blue sky almost fully covered with white clouds.
Otsala poses in the same carpeted room with tall windows, sitting cross-legged on the floor between her mother Stanzin Dolma and sister Tsering Chondol (36). Her nephew Stanzin Kunphel (4) stands on the sill of the open window and her niece Stanzin Saldon (8) sits on the sill of the third window. Kunphel wearing T-shirt and pants holds the sides of the window for support. Saldon, wearing black- framed glasses and kameez with calf-length stretch pants, holds a light brown teddy bear in her lap. Dolma wears a light purple knee-length jacket with a collar and a black woollen vest. Otsala wears a red sweater and violet pyjamas. Chondol wears a chocolate brown full-sleeved sweater over a salwar kameez and is resting her right hand on her sister’s shoulder.
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“Before my illness, I used to enjoy dancing. Now, with physiotherapy, I am able to remove my socks by myself”

Among the mountains in the rarefied atmosphere of Ladakh’s Leh district, you might have spotted a rugged 63-year-old walking uphill and downhill in the village of Lingshed, carrying her 24-year-old daughter on her back. That would be Stanzin Dolma whose youngest child Stanzin Otsala contracted brain tuberculosis 10 years ago.
 
When Tsering Dorjay from REWA Society took photographer Vicky Roy to the house of Stanzin Dolma’s daughter Tsering Chondol (36) in Leh town, a brand-new wheelchair had arrived just the previous day. REWA, which helps children with special needs, had managed to procure it for Otsala. She had got her second shot of the coronavirus vaccine and she posed outside in the wheelchair, which couldn’t be used indoors since the house (like most Indian houses) was not accessible. One hopes it proves useful in Lingshed, a far-flung and sparsely populated village that got its very first motorable road only in 2019!
 
Stanzin Dolma and her husband Sonam Punchok are farmers who grow wheat, peas and other vegetables for their own consumption. They keep yaks, goats and donkeys and earn a little extra through limited sales of yak cheese and butter. They sent all five children of theirs to school in Leh, where they lived in hostels. In December 2011 Otsala was in Class 7 when she developed a bad cough and started feeling unusually tired and sleepy. She phoned her mother, who dispatched Chondol, and the two sisters stayed in the house of their eldest sibling, Tsewang Dolma (38), who was married to a carpenter in Leh. They took Otsala to an amchi doctor (practitioner of Tibetan medicine) who treated it as a common cold.
 
In February 2012 when her condition worsened they turned to allopathy but by then it was too late. She lapsed into a coma for three months in a government hospital, the CT scan showed she had brain TB, and medicines were ineffective at this stage. She emerged from hospital with paralysis in the right half of her body, an inability to speak, and impaired movement in her left leg and left hand. Her mother has been taking care of all her personal needs including bathing and feeding her. When adult diapers proved too expensive, REWA provided a chair toilet for her.
 
Chondol, who lives in Leh with her two small children and whose husband is in the army, remembers Otsala in her schooldays: “She used to enjoy dancing, and loved chicken and mutton momos.” Her movements have improved through physiotherapy at REWA, though. Chondol encourages her to eat by herself although she keeps spilling food, and she can now remove her socks on her own – baby steps on a long, long road to independence.

Photos:

Vicky Roy

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