Baby was living in a mental hospital. Baby had speech problems. You might ask, how was her speech problem being treated? It was not. Why, you ask? Because mental illness overpowers everything else, and that person is reduced to being just a mental illness. Because hospital caregivers did not think it important to address her physical disability. What did we do about it? We told the hospital authorities that a speech therapist must be engaged to help Baby. Did they listen? No. Baby’s doctor told us that we should intervene and help however we can. What did we do then? We simply relied on Baby’s narrative, deconstructed her garbled words and took her to Bihar. Then? Baby exclaimed and pointed jubilantly towards her lane and house. What happened after that? Baby went home and was united with her family.
We ask, what if Anjali was not there? Baby would have lived out the rest of her life in the hospital. We ask, why such conditions? Because the overarching emphasis on the doom that mental illness brings does not let us look at other forms of disabilities in relation to it. Different schools of thought do not talk to each other. We ask, who suffers? Baby.
Photos with full consent.