Theater: Laughter at the Expense of Those With Disabilities

30 Jun 2013 4 Comments

by Dr. Michelle Harrison in Cerebral Palsy, Culture, Daily Life, Disability, Ganga, Good and Evil, Obstacles

We attended a drama, Anubhav, by Ramaprasad Banik, being put on by the Theater Group of Nehru Children’s Museum at the Academy of Fine Arts.  It was presented as a play about the emotional sensitivity of children, and it took place in a school for boys.    I took the five big girls, Kalpana,and Ganga (in her chair).  Seema Gupta, on our Board met us there.  She had friends whose children were in the play, an she had gotten the tickets for us.  She had also clarified in advance that we had one child in a wheelchair, and it was agreed the chair would be next to us in the aisle.

We were on the early side and went right in.  We found our seats in the second row, up to the aisle, but the aisle was so narrow, the chair totally blocked the aisle.  So I moved forward temporarily to the front row and put the chair in front of me, leaving a very wide area for people to pass.

“Madam, you must move.  This (the child in the chair) is blocking the way.”

Me: “Well there is still a lot of room for people to pass, but there is no room in the aisle for anyone to get past.  I have a seat just behind me, with the others.”  He looked back and figured out  we were a group.  I added, ‘We arranged all this in advance.”

“Madam, you can move her to the back of the auditorium so she does not block the aisle.”

“You mean where she can’t see as much?  That wouldn’t be nice to treat her that way just because she is in a wheelchair!”    Iwas being as sweet, dumb sounding, and immovable as I could.

“Oh yes, well then move her over to the end of the row, by the exit.”

“Oh my, but then she can’t see the full stage.”

All this happened over about ten minutes, with different men coming to replace the ones who had been unsuccessful in moving us.  Seema Gupta was wonderful in trying to help negotiate, knowing I wasn’t moving, and as upset as I was. I talked to Ganga as this was going on.  I asked if she was OK, and I said we were doing this so people would have better places for people who needed wheelchairs.  She smiled, grinned, and seemed to get it.  I asked again if she was OK, and she grinned.

A compromise was reached, wherein Ganga would be in the front with me before the play and when it started I would move back into the second row seat on the aisle and she would be in the aisle next to me.  All I could think of was the fire hazard of this arrangement now that we WERE blocking the aisle.

The play was in Bengali but I’d heard that it was about emotional sensitivity, and there was an orphan in it… and I could follow some of what was going on.  There was slapstick… I kept noticing that.  Early there was slapstick about a boy who couldn’t speak.  He would open his mouth and words wouldn’t come out.  The others would yell at him to talk.  His mother hit him over the head.  The whole place burst into laughter, including Ganga.  But then Ganga couldn’t stop laughing, couldn’t get herself under control.  Because it was fastest way, I picked her up out of the chair and left through the exit.  I sat with her in the lobby, just soothing her.  She calmed down.  She was upset.  We just sat, her head against my chest.

The theater group director happened to come by and said hello.  He had no idea what had gone on.  He was proud of the production, and said it was good our children were here “because it’s about these things.”  He talked with pride about his school, and the boys… (he then quickly added girls) who were in it.  But the play was a boy’s play.  There were NO good parts for girls.  They either were girls who giggled, or mothers of the boys.

I tried once to carry her back in but she started uncontrolled spasms of laughter as I opened the door.  But during intermission we did go back in.  I carried her in and sat with her on my lap, which is where she wanted to be.  Usually she would rather be with the big girls.  She didn’t laugh.  She was somber.   In the final scene the boy who can’t talk was being goaded by another boy.  Just another happy ending.

I just kept thinking how glad I was that Sudip wasn’t there, my Secretary with CP, who lives it all.

A few days ago we visited an NGO, which is part of an international group that serves the poor and those with disabilities.  Sudip had visited them seven years before as part of his activism with Ankur in Disability Awareness and they remembered him fondly.  We visited all their buildings and grounds and then they took us to the meditation room, a beautiful architecturally designed brick structure, but inaccessible to those with disabilities.  This had not changed in the seven years since Sudip had been there before.  I asked what they did with people in wheelchairs, whether they just carried them in.  “No, they sit outside the building.”

From inside this beautiful meditation room, I took a picture of Sudipendu Dutta standing outside.

Sudipendu Dutta on crutches standing outside inaccessible meditation building

Sudipendu Dutta Outside the Ashram’s Inaccessible Meditation Room

Rape… “too much for the reader to deal with.”

26 May 2013 6 Comments

by Dr. Michelle Harrison in Daily Life, Disability, Dr. Harrison's Life, Music and Dance, Safety, Violence

Rehearsing for a performance of dance and song, everyone.

Rehearsing for a performance of dance and song, everyone.

I’m Stuck!  I keep starting posts and deleting them, at least six times over the last few weeks.  Fear stops me.

The picture I posted is not what I imagined I’d pick.  I was thinking something sad, related to what I haven’t said yet.  The picture is of a singing rehearsal for the Movement, Dance, and Song program we are putting on next month. At Shishur Sevay we have Dance & Movement three times a week, and Singing & Harmonium twice a week.   We have dances now that include everyone.  One dance is a train, with the older girls pushing along the chairs with the girls who cannot walk.  In other dances, we have harnesses that the older girls use to swing the younger ones as they dance.  Most of the time we dance and sing to the songs of Tagore.  I want to get someone to film the small event.  The picture above is reflective of what it is like at Shishur Sevay these days.  We are no longer living crisis to crisis.

So how do we talk about sexual abuse without “spoiling the atmosphere?”  It is so incredibly easy to ignore.  Like others, I was shaken by the gang rape in Delhi, and then the rape, mutilation, and death of the five year old.   Both these events galvanized the country.

But I also started thinking about what happens every day….  I thought about what one of my girls said of her life before Shishur Sevay, “You beg in the day; then the men use you at night; then you beg again in the morning.”  I thought about the sexual abuse in orphanages…. and I thought about our experience with one of the girls sexually abusing another, in fact, abusing the children with disabilities who cannot protest and cannot tell.  I thought about the pacts of silence around abuse, here, there, everywhere.  Shishur Sevay has become Zero Tolerant with regard to abuse.  There has to be a safe place.  The victims have to come first.  Still, you can’t be zero tolerant unless you can find out what is going on.  All the doors in our house have glass panes.  We have CCTV with cameras all over.  Nothing is ever enough.  Evil has its way of seeping through.

I wrote a book, “The Preteen’s First Book About Love, Sex, and AIDS,” published in 1995 by American Psychiatric Press.  I wrote, “The crossing of sexual boundaries between people, whether in word or touch, seems to cause deeper wounds and greater shame than any other kinds of abuse.  The person who commits the crime of sexual abuse seems to pass on the shame and humiliation to the victim.”

What then do we tell the children?  Do we “normalize” abuse as something that may happen, but isn’t their fault?  What are we saying then about our cultures, and I use plural because these problems are universal.  This is not an India problem except that it has attention now, and because I live here with children who have been abused, and may very well be abused in the future as women, women alone, women as wives, women as cognitively or physically impaired.

I looked again at the picture I posted above, and posted it again.  It’s the same picture but having talked about sexual abuse, it’s not quite the same because we are not quite the same when we see behind the wall.

Rehearsal for a Performance of Dance and Movement, and Song

Rehearsal for a Performance of Dance and Movement, and Song, Everyone

At Shishur Sevay we are also starting tabla classes.  I bought two sets, so two girls could take their lessons at once.  I unpacked the tablas yesterday and then I started tapping the daya and soon I was far away, not thinking about anything, tapping to ancient rhythms that took the troubles out of my mind space.

`Dr. Harrison playing with the new tabla, getting lost in the sound.

I read that tabla is an ancient language, “Everything that is to be played on tabla can be spoken; in fact, everything that is to be played must first be spoken.”  So here are some spoken words I hope one day to be able to play in the language of the tabla.

Rape

I forgot for a moment

I had been raped, for

One moment forgotten,

In eighteen years remembering —

Eighteen years is

for fear,

Eighteen years is

for hate,

Eighteen years is

for pain,

Eighteen more years, for

One more moment, of

Forgetting

I had been raped.

MH

11/76

My first book, “A Woman in Residence,” Random House 1982, now in Kindle, is an autobiographical account of my training in obstetrics and gynecology.  The manuscript I submitted to the publisher included the story of my having been raped at knife-point when I was 17, but the editor insisted I take it out.  She said, “It’s too much for the reader to deal with.”  I went along with her, too vulnerable to argue.

My fear?  I guess I just discovered it, “too much for the reader to deal with.”

Let my dialogue begin.  I have been too silent for too long.

Foes Into Friends

03 Apr 2013 2 Comments

by Dr. Michelle Harrison in Child Welfare Committee, Disability, Dr. Harrison's Life

Yes We Did!

Image

Standing outside the CWC after our success.

Stress has been high.  I couldn’t sleep; Ganga screamed with nightmares in her sleep.  I needed a plan. Ialso faced another problem with the CWC, namely permission for three girls to go on their class trip out of West Bengal.  I sometimes forget they are still under the court.

So I went into this internal space where I seem to come up with plans at times, and I found one.  We would surprise the CWC by showing up for the permissions.  We would come with big smiles on our faces, pretending that Monday never happened.

So, first we prepared the request letters, with copies of each girl’s school ID, and attached their academic achievements, as well as the itinerary of the trip.  They wore their Shishur Sevay dress uniforms.  I wore a hand painted silk sari I bought once at the airport in Bangladesh when I was renewing my visa.  I believe that sometimes costuming makes us feel stronger, or at least it does for me.  When I was with J&J, dressed for the corporate world, I actually used a lot of make-up designed to make me look natural.   I thought of it as putting on my war paint as I got ready for work… these primitive rituals have meaning.

Seema Gupta, Purba Rudra, and of course Sudipendu Dutta, my Secretary, would go too.  I learned today i had missed the meaning of some of the discussion on Monday on why you couldn’t mix “handicapped and normals.”  I’d heard the Chairwoman say that it was too dangerous, that they could murder… and given that OUR problem was that one of our “normals” had attacked one of the kids with disabilities, I thought the Chair was saying we had to protect them from the “normals.”  No, she was talking about people with disabilities murdering and raping normal people and that’s why they couldn’t be together!  I had been upset for Sudip without realizing it was much worse than I’d understood.

Well, how to describe how wonderful it was…. there was only one officer there, but he was the one who was so horrible to me weeks ago.  We smiled.  Seema explained why we were there and gave him the papers.  The letter for one of the girls described her current study of art and he asked her if she would give them a picture to put up in the office.  Tides were turning.  Seema also talked to him about the comments about separating groups and asked up front about whether he thought Sudip should be separated from us.  The man responded with a strong no, and talked about the importance of inclusion.

The girls reminded me of the video and I took out the iPad and showed him two dance clips from yesterday afternoon, our kids all dancing together.  He remembered the mother and baby we had taken in and was thrilled to see them both happy.  Our girls knew things were going well and had happy smiles on their faces.  What a team!  What a presentation!  What a turning of the tides, foe into friend.

Seema chatted with the officer and suddenly I heard times being mentioned, times that would be good for us for a visit on Friday.  I said any time was fine, that it didn’t matter.  He smiled, a friendly smile, as if he suddenly understood I am genuine, So it looks like it will be Friday  morning.  I can breathe more easily even as I write this.

On Friday we will have gifts for the CWC, and flowers to present to them. I’m not worried, well about 90% not worried.  There is a certain unpredictability about life, everywhere but here a bit more than usual.

The support of all of you who have written feels really important.  It strengthens me.  I get my strength from many sources, from God, from Kali, from my kids and family, from my friends, from the love and support and prayers that are sent to me.  I guess they all go into that internal space where plans are made and discovered, and I find lights along the paths out of my fear.  I find strength in the memory of my grandmother who would point out across the ocean and tell me never to forget the starving children….

I would not have said that turning foes into friends is gift of mine.  I might even have said the opposite.  So maybe this is a new skill, a new light, a new path I’ve learned to navigate.  Protecting the girls forces me to grow.  I love it.  I’m smiling.

Image

I’m White

02 Apr 2013 6 Comments

by Dr. Michelle Harrison in Child Welfare Committee, Daily Life, Disability, Dr. Harrison's Life, Music and Dance, Obstacles, Safety

Child Labor Law Violation 1

Child Labor Law Violation

I had a bad time at CWC today.  I didn’t go alone, but it didn’t matter.  No one was listening to anything I said, and they were rude and angry if I did try to defend myself.   One of the consequences of my tough decisions in the last couple of months is that not everyone was happy, of course.  For matters of privacy I will be brief, but will say that adolescents, and I believe particularly adolescent girls can be very destructive, and very charmingly convincing that they have been wronged.  In fact this girl has been so wronged CWC now wants to see if the other girls are likewise being exploited in violation of Child Labor laws.

It sounds silly but I remember as a kid cleaning the house with my mother, playing music, talking…. taking care of our home.  I was told today though that in India this is not done, that girls/women don’t clean their own homes.  But what about my girls?  Should I assume they will all be affluent enough to hire servants to cook and clean?  You think those are the families they will marry into?  I think I somehow really challenged a cultural norm.  I think these people at CWC are enraged that the girls clean.  Maybe it’s my being a white American and some image of my exploiting them?  I tried to tell the CWC that I clean the bathroom, which is true, but they weren’t listening to anything I had to say.  I clean the bathroom for several reasons.  First, no one else wants to do it.  Second, in my mind, cleaning is honorable work.  Third, the girls have come to really appreciate a clean bathroom.  They take care of the other bathrooms. That’s not a bad thing.  And of course the hippocracy of all this is that in India it’s the middle class who most uses child servants in their homes.

They seemed enraged that a girl was expected to change the diaper of a child with disabilities.  I’m thinking this is all an April Fools joke and they are dead serious.  So the issue of diapers let to a sudden reaction that I had “normal and handicapped” in the same home and that had to end!  I said that CWC had given me these girls, but that wasn’t relevant either.  It was really ugly, and I expressed my feelings about it, which is to say I was not submissive.  I finally got one person who was lecturing me that this was a court, to understand this court had jurisdiction over the child but not over me.  They simply do not have the authority to force me to take a violent girl back into the home, however much she sheds tears.  Their plan was for me to take her back but not give her work to do.  Yeah, right!

I am not dealing with a rational system here.  I heard it described as judicial anarchy, and I think this is true.  There are no real rules.   Our home has been inspected seven times, with the same kids, same mix of “normals and handicapped” as they continued to describe them.  There has never been a problem.

Would this all be playing out differently if I were Indian?  I’m thinking yes.    It’s been the divide until recently even within the home.     Are they seeing me as the White lady using Indian girls to clean her house?    If this is the stereotype can they  even see beyond who I represent?  This is personal.  I have visited NGO’s where they show off the weaving being done by five year olds (vocational training), and no one says anything.  I reported a home almost ten years ago where girls were being used as servants instead of being sent to school.  I had proof, documents, school records, attendance records, but I could not get anything changed.

This is the CWC where I brought the eight starving children from Aunty’s, where three children there have died since then, but no one will do anything.  The last time I was there, I was standing outside and Aunty told me to move because the feces was coming down over the balcony and she didn’t want me to get dirty.  Government inspectors came but they ignored everything.  I was there.  They ignored me.

Now it’s 2:30 am and I can’t sleep.  I tried.  I’m also in the middle of major dental work, as things seemed a bit quiet and I took the time.  Well, I guess from the tension this evening, the temporary bridges and crowns cracked and my mouth hurts.  I’m afraid to leave Shishur Sevay until this “surprise” CWC inspection happens this week so I’m not sure what to do, except drink a lot of liquids only, and keep my mouth closed… not so easy…

We told the girls what was going on because they will be interviewed, and because we will be sprucing up our paperwork, which needed doing anyway.  So a friend told me to have them prepped and all I could think of were the custody cases in the US where the first question is always, “Did your mother/father tell you to say this?”  Nope, they will say what they want and I will deal with it, whatever it is.

I know we will survive this — but I’m scared.  I’m also pissed.  I’m a seventy year old doctor, psychiatrist, and obstetrician and gynecologist.  I have 45 years of clinical experience working with woman and children.  Actually I wrote that in my report today but they ignored it.  Even when Seema Gupta translated it into Bengali they ignored it.  They are out for blood, my blood, this White woman’s blood.

The Seventy Year Old Doctor

The Seventy Year Old Doctor

Here is my testimony:

Dance and Movement, Inclusive as it should be

Dance and Movement, Inclusive as it should be

This is a picture from our new Dance and Movement classes three times a week.  On the days between classes the girls like to put on the music and practice.  Six years ago I promised Ganga she would dance one day, and now she does.

We live as a family.  We eat together, sleep together, watch tv together, pray together.  We don’t separate by abilities because we all have so much to give each other.

OOPS! Another picture of all of us together. no separate beaches.

OOPS! Another picture of all of us together. no separate beaches.

The group who came with me today was

1.Seema Gupta, Board Member, Joint Secretary, and Deputy Registrar of Calcutta High Court.

2. Purba Rudra, Ph.D, our Academic Director

3. Sudipendu Dutta, my secretary.  (I hired him as assistant, but in India, Secretary is higher, so now he is my Secretary).  Sudip is an incredibly hard worker, sincere, responsible, and cares so much about what we are doing.  He also has Cerebral Palsy and walks with sticks.  He manages.  I kept wondering what it was like for him, listening to all this about not having “handicapped and normals” together.   What did this mean for his life, his family life, his work life…. Was it OK that we were all together or should there be separate accommodations for him?   He is also an activist working with others on creating a residence for people with disabilities…. and has been talking about the success of inclusion, Shishur Sevay as a model of how good it can be.  What was he thinking?  I’ll have to ask him in the morning.

Now it’s 3:30 am and I think I’m ready to post this and try to sleep for a couple of hours.

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