RADICAL VULNERABILITY

Abhishek Anicca's memoir of living with disability is an intense account shorn of heroism & sentiment, but infused with love

- Shrabonti Bagchi

Every disabled person in this country has to become an activist, says writer and poet Abhishek Anicca over the phone from Delhi, where he has just landed from Patna, where he lives. "Go to an ATM, you find that it is not accessible to someone in a wheelchair or using a crutch. Complain to the officials, put it out on Twitter. Go to a cool, independent bookstore and find that it has a really steep spiral staircase, which you have no hope of being able to climb.Complain, put it on social media, wait," Anicca says.

After a pause, he adds: "This is something you shouldn't have to do. It is humiliating. It dehumanises you. It makes you feel like your only identity is as a disabled person. But then what can we do, we live in a society shaped by ability privilege." Anicca's recently released book, The Grammar Of My Body, is a memoir of living with disability and chronic illness, and a moving diatribe against a world that overlooks this privilege. A lyrical yet unflinching account, it is necessary documentation of being an Indian person with disability who also values their independence and doesn't want to be surrounded by the oppression of care.

According to the 2019 National Statistics Office report on disability, an estimated 2.2% of India's population (or roughly 31 million people) lives with some physical or mental disability. More accurate numbers are simply unavailable-earlier this year, a Parliamentary standing committee on social justice and empowerment called out the Union government for failing to accurately estimate the current population of persons with disabilities (PwDs) in the country. The committee pointed out that in the ongoing sixth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), conducted by the Union ministry of health and family welfare, disability related questions had been dropped.