A far cry from what is our reality at home. A few months ago while cramped into the improvised seat on a micro-bus headed from Chabahil to Ratna Park, I watched a young man scoop his friend from his wheelchair and carry him into the passenger seat in the front of the micro. As the horns blared behind us and the traffic police walked over to say “ali chitto garnu”. The man in mid-air stared at the traffic police and gave us passengers an apologetic face. His friend hurried as best he could and as he shoved the man further into the seats the khalashi dai folded the wheelchair and plonked it onto the two men´s laps.
There had been a hold-up because the passengers who had been sitting in the coveted front row claimed they had been there first and were trying to convince the khalashi dai to seat the two men – one in a wheelchair – in the back, where no less than five men and women were already cooped over standing. Shocked and embarrassed at the state of my country and my country-people I recalled that scene in DC, told myself someday, someday, it’ll be even better and thought of my favorite hero, Rajesh Hamal, and him claiming “hami sabai sakchhyam chou”. He’d told me (and any other viewer of the Rotary Nepal Disability Awareness Campaign) that “hamro sano prayash le pani uniharuko jeevan ma thulo parivartan lyauna sakcha”. I loved Rajesh Hamal, but at that moment I thought his words couldn´t have been further from the truth.
Our small effort would bring negligible difference. What can we do about the fact that public transportation at large is menacing to the differently-abled? What can we do when the driver stopping for the differently-abled is an exception because most are just ignored? What can we do when most restaurants, malls, offices and establishments basically bar entrance for the differently-abled?
What can we do about the fact that public transportation at large is menacing to the differently-abled? What can we do when the driver stopping for the differently-abled is an exception because most are just ignored?
The funny part is it is no longer appropriate to call them “disabled”. And, though I rolled my eyes when I first heard of yet another word no longer being politically correct, I agree now because they have surely been disabled in these ways. Just because our world is always designed with the majority in mind – in terms of gender (patriarchy anyone?), religion (state-sponsored faith anyone?) and income (the more you pay the better service you get, right?) – it doesn’t mean the “differently”-abled are spared. The other day I was mulling over this as I made my way from the tarkari pasal to the bus stop in Jawalakhel and abruptly decided it wasn’t always “our”, the dominantly-abled, faults. There is a brand new sidewalk that is for once not riddled with potholes that can easily swallow a grown man and bricks spitting every which way along that stretch of the path. I watched a man roll his wheelchair down the main street and inevitably slow the traffic now trailing behind him, and thought that “they” didn’t help the situation either. I wanted to tell him to get on the even sidewalk but abruptly refrained from offering my not-so-expert opinion when I realized he actually couldn´t. If I had I would have had to carry the wheelchair, either with him seated inside it or carried him onto the sidewalk first and then the wheelchair onto the sidewalk. And then repeat this procedure every two meters. Sidewalks don’t gently slope in and out. Pedestrians have to literally take a step (sometimes big ones at that) to get back on the sidewalk when it has been split every few meters to make driveways possible for the offices and residences that lie on the same path. It was then that I realized that the sidewalks are designed with folks like me in mind, probably because it was designed by people who are able-ed the way I am.
Since making that small mental note it was obvious that most places – including some of Kathmandu’s posher parts— are difficult for the differently-abled to enter. Remember the flight of stairs that must be climbed to enter Civil Mall, City Center, Fire and Ice and Java? If places like these have not made it somewhat easy for all to enter, then tempos and sidewalks are already out of the question.
Since this realization, I’ve counted just a handful of businesses that are accessible for the differently-abled. So while we salute the likes of Red Dingo in Jawalakhel or United World Trade Center at Tripureshwor (which may or may not have designed with the differently-abled in mind or simply fluked this differently-abled friendly tag) I hope that as new buildings are built and roads paved, we try and consider means of making more parts of the city accessible to the differently-abled. Bus seats designed to lock in wheelchair patients or specially textured lanes like I hear of the ones in Japan where the blind can tap more easily may be far off for Nepal with its plethora of emergencies to deal with today, but it will only be absolutely elusive if we refrain from even considering it while we can.
If a team is only as strong as its weakest member (and without implying the differently-abled are our weakest) isn’t it still a lesson for us to consider, but beyond consider, how it is a testament for us to include the differently-abled – in every sphere, including schools, hospitals, and ahem, laws and constitutions too – when we design anything with just the majority in mind, because of how that disables the different and inadvertently weakens the whole?
sradda.thapa@gmail.com
Related story
Suffering in silence
