The unconquerable soul

Last fortnight, a bunch of differently abled people were honoured by the Limca Book of Records in Delhi as ‘people of the year’. I was delighted to find one of them in a WhatsApp group I belong to, called ‘Making a difference’. There are no good morning messages, no flowers, sunrises, coffee cups or fruit bowls. And, there is no whining, but grit, cheer and a quiet confidence.

Major DP Singh, a Limca hero, posted a bright and cheerful message to announce that he was a “chosen one”… chosen to make a difference in this world. He said he was “not lucky enough to be born specially abled, but was given a wild card entry late in life. Perhaps the Army quota worked here”. Thanking General Pervez Musharraf for this “favour” done during the Kargil war, the major thanked the Indian army for training him “never to give up”. He started running marathons on a prosthetic leg from 2009, and has since motivated 100-odd amputees to run marathons. He was immediately invited by Jayashree Ravindran, founder of Ability Foundation, to write his story for its magazine, Success & Ability .

The previous day, the group admin, S Vaidyanathan, who gave up a corporate finance job to initiate help groups and counselling services for the disabled, had alerted me to Jaskaran Singh, the first quadriplegic getting admission in an IIM. Actually, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta have all offered him admission under the PwD (persons with disability) quota.

Singh, a graduate from IIT (BHU) Varanasi, became paralysed neck down after a car crash on a Punjab highway, which killed his parents and younger brother. “That was in April 2012; he had come to our hospital for rehabilitation. I caught up with him later and along with many of his friends, supported him on the path to independence,” says Divya Parashar, a Delhi-based psychologist.

When Singh was struggling to put his life together, a group of friends provided him support, motivation, confidence. “That’s all he required.”When he decided to write the CAT — his first attempt — Vaidyanathan, also on a wheelchair after a spinal cord injury sustained while at IIM-B, was all encouragement and support. Twenty years ago, Vaidyanathan had returned to college after a huge struggle. At that time, the elite IIMs were not for paraplegics.

Interestingly, Singh, 27, who works for a real estate company, is yet to take a call on which IIM he’ll choose. He is inclined towards IIM-Bangalore because it is much better equipped to meet special needs and challenges. This, thanks to the Office of Disability Services, a one-stop support centre for students with disabilities that Rishikesha Krishnan, now the director of IIM-Indore, set up here a few years ago. It has won awards being a good accessibility model for the disabled. “I’m also looking at what kind of facilities IIM-A has to offer,” Singh says.

But most of our educational facilities and services have a long way to go in giving access to disabled students. So Singh has made history. But for every such success story, surely there are thousands of students and not only with physical disabilities that make accessing classrooms a struggle, who don’t get an ounce of encouragement to see them through. Last year, IIM-Indore was in the news for being rigid and labelling a girl with dyslexia as physical challenged and forcing her to repeat a year as she lacked the minimum pass marks. Surely our education system now needs to be injected with a “special ability” vaccine to make it more equitable and inclusive.

But despite all odds, the chosen ones march on, regardless of prejudice, reminding you of William Ernest Henley’s poem Invictus that kept Nelson Mandela going through his toughest times in prison: I thank whatever gods may be / For my unconquerable soul /I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul.