Farzana Versey February 8, 2005

Tags: disabled , sexuality , review , film

Are the desires and dreams of the disabled all bleak?

rel="tag" href="/tag/music">music in the background but you cannot hear a note of it.

Your lover wants to run after the sheet of paper let loose from your diary and carried away with the wind, but by the time he picks up his crutches and painfully limps in its direction it is too late; even your wheelchair gets stuck against a stone.

This is the world inhabited by millions. We can call them the disabled, but their disability is no handicap for all the natural impulses that human beings are prey to. How do they love, how do they make love, how do they fake love? Why should their needs and emotions be any different?

The sexuality of the disabled is an area of utter darkness. We are afraid that broaching the subject might appear like we are chiding them. Perhaps, there is some degree of insecurity within them too. But the barriers have to be broken.

Some years ago I had met a couple in their 60s for a story I was doing. The man was paralysed from the waist down, his wife ministering to his every need. They were a conservative family, living in a middle-class housing colony. A puja area took up one corner of the living room. The lady’s saree pallu discreetly covered her, almost like a sheath. How was I going to ask them?

I started with those light, frothy, meaningless queries about how they met, then on to the mandatory ‘coping’ stuff; finally, I had picked up the courage to ask them whether they had led a fulfilling life.

To my surprise, they felt no embarrassment at all. They spoke about the practical difficulties, but desires were there and they had found their way around. They shared their intimate moments in a subtle manner. I must have looked ill at ease for the man asked, “Would you like some more tea?” Sure I did. I was the one handicapped here. I had assumed – perhaps even hoped – that they might hesitate and give me a sob story. They had shattered my impression and, although I was happy for them, I still kept wondering about how much of it was for real.

Reality bites as I discovered when a friend was dating a hip young woman. There were hordes of girls who were attracted to him when he drove fast through the sea-facing street, the hood of his car down, his shirt clinging to his chest, hair flying and a smile on his lips. Everyone thought his girlfriend was lucky. She felt so too, until the full impact of watching movies and listening to jazz and dancing at discotheques together with a deaf-mute man finally hit her. It was a cordial separation. They found their respective mates among their own kind.

‘They kind’ sounds like some awful ghetto, although we do know that people leap over barriers and lead happy lives. But often they want to remain within the cocoon of their own, to be cushioned by familiar blows rather than strange ones.

Michelle, her body twisted with helpless longing, asks her teacher, “Will you kiss me, please?” His age does not matter to her. He is the only man who she has known at such proximity, the one who has taught her – a blind, deaf, mute girl – to understand words by feeling them on her hands and through those tortured breaths that throw up disjointed sounds when fingers touch her mouth.

Her life may be the colour of a moonless night, as Sanjay Leela Bhansali has shown so brilliantly in the film ‘Black’, but within her the storms have shades and layers that she is trying to grope with. “Will you kiss me, please?” she pleads with the one man who understands her suffocation. He turns his face away only to return his gaze and see her bundled up in the chair, knowing that no man will give her physical love ever. He holds her and gently brushes his lips against hers. Next morning he disappears. As she says later, “He gave me the respect of a woman, but felt too ashamed of his act…”

She internalises her gratitude, tapping away on a Braille typewriter, a sound she does not hear, and smiles with lips that she herself cannot see. She can only feel the denial, the weight of holding back…
* * *

Of all the disabled, I think the blind lose out the most. Whatever anyone might say about the romantic appeal of a perfume or the softness of flesh, the visual impact is the first one. I had spoken to two blind people, a man and a woman, to understand their concept love and sex.

Sajida was born blind and has never seen the light. She has a sonorous voice but seems shy. Mahendra displays a quiet confidence and has been a friend for several years now.

What about the pangs of growing up, the natural hormonal assertions – how did you deal with it?

Sajida: You keep it to yourself, or maybe share it with a close friend, but there is tremendous silence in this area. I feel my femininity is not even taken into consideration.
Mahendra: Our natural desires are never taken into account. Even when we express a desire to marry, the parents do not understand why. One would think that during adolescence there is the readymade possibility of expressing your feelings, but as I recall I could not even talk to my friends freely about it.

Then what are the avenues available? How do you learn?

Sajida: We are surrounded by sighted people so we know what they are talking about. Besides, things like menstruation are explained, though in a clinical manner. For the rest, we depend on our own feelings.
Mahendra: There is quite a bit of literature available today. You even get ‘Playboy’ in Braille, as also books showing different postures. Oh sure, like anybody else there is a great deal of awkwardness when we want to subscribe to these publications and there is the usual hide-and-seek and finding helpful friends!

How do you woo a person and how do you get attracted to him/her in the first place?

Sajida: I am very reserved and since I am as yet single the opportunity or experience of wooing is not familiar. But I think I would like flowers or good music and I do find men who talk well very appealing, though I can see through if they are putting on an act!
Mahendra: The strategy you use is based on the individual and what her interests are. About getting attracted, I know a couple of friends who have decided on the basis of voice or the perfume, but that is not a major way of judging. I think the real basis has more to do with touch. It’s a little more physical and if the vibrations are there, then it works. If you watch a blind couple you will invariably see them holding hands. It is very important.

What if one of the partners is sighted – are there more problems or is it a better relationship?

Sajida: I would think that the blind person always fears that the other would be too assertive. You might then become more aware of your handicap. But on the other hand, you might end up with a supportive partner instead of the blind leading the blind.
Mahendra: I am married to a sighted woman, an Austrian, and we have a daughter. I think it is possible to have a relationship on an equal footing. But in our society you have to judge the attitude of the sighted person. If the marriage was arranged, you would not know whether the person is in it of her own free will or not.

Would there be less insecurity if both are blind?

Sajida: Perhaps, but only where blindness is concerned. I did have a relationship with a blind man, but other differences cropped up. He was extremely short-tempered.
Mahendra: If I want to be nasty, I won’t think whether the person I am with is blind or not. We are given to what constitutes human nature, like deception, false promises…The only major case for two blind people to be together is that they might understand each other’s needs better.
* * *

These are fairly self-sufficient people. There is the larger world where I have seen moments of bliss and despair. K was a music teacher whose services were suspended because he was alleged to be homosexual and was exploiting the other blind students at the hostel. A former colleague of his was shocked, “They discovered his homosexuality after 22 years?” I was told that this accusation is often used as a trump card to harass them if they do not toe the official line, which might include little things like not touching the walls and soiling them. They argue, “We cannot see, so sometimes we do take the support of walls. What can we do about it?”

Compare this with the attitude towards novelist Firdaus Kanga. He suffers from a debilitating neurological condition that has paralysed most of his body, he moves around in a wheelchair, and he is gay. He wrote about his experiences in his first book and his second. I had sounded a note of caution at the time, saying that of all those who were praising his work, how many were doing it out of sympathy and how many due to its literary merit? And would he himself be able to come out of the trap and go beyond his handicap? It probably sounded cruel then, but a friend of his had called me up and said, “Thank you for telling him what we cannot.”

During a demonstration on one White Cane Day, I had joined the group. The local corporator and another politician asked some of us to come along to Jogger’s park. It was around 8 pm and dark. While the rest of the lot were huddled in conversation, Arpan Singh and I decided to take a stroll on the mud-track. I was wearing heels so I had to tread carefully. To Arpan all walking places were the same, and darkness and light made no difference.

Suddenly, he stretched out his arm and touched a leaf. “There is so much greenery here,” he said. In the dark I, the sighted, could not see any greens. “It is wet,” his voice trailed off as he ran his hands over the foliage. We reached the low wall and sat for a while. He was swaying gently as one would to the music of the swelling tides as he inhaled the scent of flowers of the night. I did not wish to interrupt his reverie, but when his face broke into a smile, I told him that the waves and the fragrance were indeed overpowering and soothing.

“No,” he said. “I have been thinking about those wet leaves.”

The touch of night-dew had not left him.