Standing Tall

That was one of the lazy Monday mornings, everybody in the office was fighting blues as all were back from a long Diwali vacation. Lanterns were still hanging all around the office. I was trying to keep my eyes open and go through all the previous week's e-mails with occasionally checking my insta on how many likes I have managed to get on The Diwali Dress. Validation was important to me so much so that I know exactly how many of my followers have seen my picture and how many have liked them. There enters a woman taking tiny steps with her tiny legs and greeting everyone with a wide smile and baby-hands wearing pink salwar kameez with blue dupatta having blue beads touching the ground making office-approved noise, entire attire looked like a baby greeting elders on the festival. 

HR was introducing Nisha to each employee at their desk. That was the first time I saw her.

Approximately around 4 Ft… She was a miniature of a 30-year-old lady in a first glace but if you observe her a little more; she was a lady with such poise and grace that a firm handshake given by her was lauding her confidence. I had never seen someone with physical limitations so close to me and it was just not that, but Nisha was going to have a desk around me. It was one of those days when you don’t know how to react to certain situations. Though I was excited enough to blurt it out to my mom about Nisha being a dwarf new joinee. I don’t know why I felt sorry for using the word dwarf and the very next day Nisha was explaining dwarfism to someone in the office. I gathered the courage to ask her that how does she deal with the discrimination and she candidly says, she doesn’t feel any, everything happens at least 2 floors above her, so she is okay. I could have gathered it, as Nisha used to come properly dressed in presentable make-up and always matching earrings and I used to arrive in the office like a drug-peddler. There was no motivation to get nicely dressed for me as my social media approvers were not seeing me every day!

Later I realized that Nisha is not a regular dwarf; she is a Para-Badminton player who had joined our company as a Designer. When you see people with shortcomings and still, they have managed to achieve so much, you certainly feel like ‘how brave that person is!’ But Nisha does not accept if somebody calls her brave, she simply says, “My limitation does not define who I am.” The problem of abled individuals is they are always afraid of the questions they might ask and offend the disabled person. In that confused state of wonderland, they never come out and become friends with people having physical limitations. Wait! Can you call that an emotional limitation! If yes, then I was planning to overcome that limitation by chatting more with her. 

I was glad that she was around me. As time passed and we got comfortable, I could ask any stupid question to her and she would answer. Once I asked her,’ have you got the circus comment anytime?’ and she blurts out,” I am too fat for circus.” When we used to go downstairs for a cup of tea; people used to do the-look-at-us and look-away technique. It’s like how teenagers check-out each other. She is in no way different from any of us, from so-called-able-bodied hatte-katte individuals. Rather she had a better sense of humour than others and I loved that.

Now the discussions have been shifted from her tiny size tailor-made clothes to checking out boys together. It’s a transition, I have witnessed myself from being a person full of self-pity craving for validation to becoming one who is standing tall, giving a damn to the world around me!

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