Ankur, who was admitted to St. Stephen’s in 2013, has been honoured by the President of India with the Arjuna Award. It is a just and timely recognition of the young man’s heroic efforts to express himself best, despite disabilities. He graduated in 2016, distinguishing himself, like a true Stephanian, in studies as well.
St. Stephen’s cannot take the credit for discovering Ankur, the athletic talent. He had begun to excel even before he applied to the college. But St. Stephen’s can share this moment of happiness and fulfilment with Ankur insofar as they stood by him through the years he spent in the institution.
While in St. Stephen’s, Ankur won a bronze in 500 meters, a bronze in 1500 meters and a gold in 800 meters at the Asian Para-Athletics. He was chosen to represent the country at the Rio Olympics.
Ankur trained hard for the Paralympics. Sadly, he suffered a setback. I remember him walking into my office, with a stoic touch of accepting the possibility that he may not be able to participate in the supreme sporting event for persons with disability. He was complaining of acute pain in his foot. I had him sent to St. Stephen’s Hospital, where Dr. Mathew Varghese, perhaps the best Orthopedician in Delhi, attended to him. Investigations proved that Ankur was deficient in calcium. This was addressed and Ankur recovered remarkably fast.
While I admired the sporting talent in Ankur, what I appreciated most in him was his quiet dignity, his unimpeachable integrity and his flinty self-respect. Keen to ensure that Ankur did not lack anything while in college, I’d ask him now and then if there was anything more that could be done to optimize his welfare, any unmet need that could be addressed. In every instance, his response was, “No sir, all my needs are being taken care of.”
He knew that what he could do for himself was a million times more important than what anyone else might do for him. While Ankur did his best for the college, he did not entertain any feeling of special entitlement. I consider that to be very praiseworthy.
In my scheme of things, people belong to two categories. (a) Those who suffer from a single disability, like Ankur Dhama who was cent per cent blind. (b) Those who, like me and the vast majority of people on this good earth, suffer from multiple disabilities. I have disabilities like not being able to perform at cent per cent, inability to be rational 24×7, inability to make all people happy all the time, and, worst of all, the inability to suffer fools gladly, which, by the way, is prescribed as a spiritual duty in the Bible. It is, for that reason, altogether inexcusable in my case.
There were, during my tenure, students with special disabilities like: (a) not being able to get up in time, on account of being in residence, to attend the 8.40 a.m. class (b) the inability to resist being used as tools by others (c) the reluctance to rejoice in the achievements of others (d) and blindness to the advantages and privileges one enjoyed and, hence, the inclination to grumble and complain all the time. The incapacity for cheerfulness and paralysis in respect of thankfulness is a very common, and very perverse, disability indeed.
People like Ankur, thank God, suffered from only ONE disability.
One of my saddest experiences in St. Stephen’s was the member of a particular department objecting violently to a person with a disability being appointed to that department. He prevailed on the HoD to convene an emergent meeting of the department to have a resolution passed to the effect that the department would not accept such an appointment. He, the head, came to me looking vexed and perplexed. I told him that the college needed the permission of no department to comply with the law of the land.
It is all right to recognize someone AFTER he proves himself. But, for the most part, the person concerned is in a state of lonely, bleeding struggle to raise his head above the waters. This is all the more acute in the case of a PWD. The mark of a sane society and humane institution is that it puts its shoulder to the wheel in this arduous struggle to go uphill.
Let me conclude with the experience of another visually challenged student of the college. I refrain from citing his name. He did well at the postgraduate level. Wanted to join an M. Phil programme in Sanskrit in Delhi University. He had to take a screening test. He failed to attend the test on account of being unable to board the train, due to his disability and the non-availability of help to locate his compartment. The university blocked his chance in a true-to-form bureaucratic fashion. This was after my retirement. Even so, I addressed a letter to the Vice Chancellor pleading that the candidate is given a re-test. The VC, or his office, did not have the courtesy even to acknowledge the letter. This, by the way, is now becoming the standard practice of making others feel the gravity of one’s office.
The same VC would be at the forefront if this candidate achieves national distinction and is being felicitated by the state. We are a society famished for glamour, and we mistake this for geniality. No, it is nothing but the thirst of the mediocre to bask in the reflected glory of someone else. It is a shame.
Well, done Ankur. May you go on to greater heights.