I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Someday, you, too, will be disabled. Unless, of course, you are fortunate enough to encounter death before it happens. And by “you” I mean You — the reader; the one sauntering through life, oblivious to the wonders of the very body they inhabit. Yes, YOU. You will be disabled someday.
Contorted. Distorted. Too deaf to hear the ongoing cacophony of that internal monologue you have going on. Too blind to be petty about the knockoff Prada the obnoxious man in the elevator is wearing.
So, consider this a gift to your future crippled self — not so much a cautionary tale as much as the forbidden lore that often hides in plain sight. I bring to you “The Freak Show,” a textual retelling of the terrifying, horrific beauty of inhabiting the body of a freak: in my case, the blind breed.
I might be irreverent, to put it nicely. (That is the first and last time I will be “nice.”) There is a difference between being nice and being kind, and I strongly prefer the latter. I will not lie to you. And I refuse to pander to decency as a school of thought.
What I most certainly will do, however, is narrate snippets of what it’s like to be a disabled artist navigating womanhood, art, academia, immigration, and, on a more non-figurative note, the literal streets of Chicago. In essence, the intent of this column is to unveil the crude chicanery that the disabled way of life is, for those of us lucky enough to involuntarily partake in it.
Before any of that, let’s get some facts straight. I am Indian. I am a woman. I am disabled. And there is my insurance against being cancelled — in increasing order of abjectness.
I am also cisgender-heterosexual, upper-caste, literate to the extent of being considered educated, and English-speaking — all matters of immense privilege from the part of the world I come from.
You’d be surprised at how much bluer the sky appears, even to blind eyes like mine, when you cut through the hogwash and free-range one-uppance.
“The Freak Show” is here to talk about the little gestures of kindness that are recognized as such only by people to whom they matter. The professor who ensures that everyone meets in class before heading together for a field trip, to evade the anxiety of travelling alone. (There are many of us who must incessantly screenshot our GPS screens to be able to enlarge them and find our way.) The presenter who reads aloud from their Power Point presentation in case someone in class cannot read very well. The classmate who keeps an eye out for roads around school that are under construction and gives you a heads up. These are the little, everyday unsung wonders that often slip through the cracks when all else is bleak.
There will also be some calling-out — of behaviors, not people. This is not intended to be a liminal space that precludes human fallibility. I don’t know about you, but I am ridden with flaws, and have much to learn. So, if you find yourself feeling called out at any point, take accountability for it and move on. Accommodations mean making space for both disabilities and mistakes alike.
For a moment, as you read this, allow yourself to think of all the different verbiage we use to describe how we experience our world. View. Lens. Perspective. World(view). In(sight). Fore(sight). Hind(sight). Forget reality for even imagination requires one to (visual)ize. Our collective intelligence has centralized vision to such an extent that sometimes, life seems contingent on it. What, then, does life (look) like when (staring) blindness in the face?
Maybe it’s finally time to find out.
