Indigo boy, my child — cwith autism

Shubhra Gupta writes: How long will it take for us to realise it is not just about him, that we all need the wind beneath our wings?

The impassioned outpourings of anger and dismay after a young boy with disabilities and his parents were not allowed to board a flight, were not just about the incident itself. Of course, in and of itself, a flight official behaving with such utter callousness with such a vulnerable part of the population, needs to be called out. But what that shameful incident at the Ranchi airport has proved all over again, if proof was indeed needed, was that this is no country for the disabled.

As parents of a youngster with autism, my husband and I have been at the receiving end of this kind of troubling behaviour not just at airports, but in every kind of public space that we have taken our son to. In the beginning, we would flinch. Every stare or comment used to be so hurtful that it would take all our energy to be brave enough for the next outing. This happened everywhere — in parks, on the road, in restaurants, movie halls and malls, because that was one of the things we were determined to do, once we had got over the initial sledgehammer blow of the diagnosis — our son would go everywhere we would, because that was his right.

It took us a long time to get to the point where we could take a deep breath, cover our lacerated skin, and leave the house with our good-looking but distinctly “different” boy, armed with the knowledge that all the strength in the world could crumble, and did, in the face of yet another inimical remark. From being told to leave a restaurant because he was “too noisy”, or have mothers take their children pointedly away in parks, or being accosted by a random stranger and asked with zero sensitivity: “Ye aisa pehle se thaa (was he always like this?)” — we’ve gone through the gamut. I remember rushing back home in tears, taking my lovely boy by his shoulders and shaking him: Why, why wouldn’t he speak? Why couldn’t he be like other kids?

The schools that we tried to get him to attend were another story altogether. We’ve had teachers and principals of some of the best schools in the capital turn us away, saying there was no place for “children like him”, because there were no teachers who were trained to handle such “difficulties”. A government official told us that “yeh bimaari toh west mein hoti hai (this illness is prevalent only in the Western countries) aap log itna shor kyon machaa rahein hain (why are you making so much fuss)”, when we had gone as part of a delegation of parents with special needs’ children, with yet another petition.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/indigo-boy-my-child-how-long-will-it-take-for-us-to-realise-it-is-not-just-about-him-that-we-all-need-the-wind-beneath-our-wings-7908413/