One fine morning, we were all playing outside when we got the message: Dr Amritbabu’s emissary had come. Soon enough we were called inside to receive the vaccine. I looked around, but did not see anyone, except a person sitting on a stool. He was so short his foot did not even touch the ground. This was my first introduction to Mamu Kaka, as we would later call him. He was a little person, a dwarf and he was a compounder. Never before had I met an adult who was so small. Initially I thought he was a child, but later when he stood up on the stool to administer the shots I realized that he was a grownup, just a little short in height.
Height definitely made a difference. He looked like a child with disproportionate hands and legs. Honestly, he looked funny; we laughed; and that made receiving the painful injections easy. Now I think about it, we were not very nice to him. We as children had fun at his expanse, but he never seemed to mind. We played with him, made fun, all in good humor. After a while, he became our favorite Kaka. Mamu kaka was fun to be around. As our bonhomie blossomed, we even tried to make life easy for him. What we thought was difficult for us (in terms of height) was surely difficult for him too.
He had a hard time reaching light switches and we would turn the lights on for him without him even noticing. We bolted the latches of high doors that were difficult for him to reach. Waited up for him when we ran and played around or when adults walked too fast. We as children were determined to make life easy and less embarrassing for him, but not out of pity. Helping him had become a habit and he did not seem to mind. Now after so many years, he had come back to my mind, not with a reason.
During a meeting with people living with various disabilities a few days prior to my dream, we had talked about all kinds of problems that these people deal with each day and I suddenly remembered Mamu Kaka. I mentioned in the meeting a few things he used to say. He often complained about the trams and busses being too high for him to climb. Even the day-to-day activities that seemed normal for us were a challenge to him because of his height. I was suddenly reminded of a reality television series Little People, Big World that aired on The Learning Channel (TLC). The show tries to lay out the problems faced by the little people in their everyday life.
The majority will have hard time visualizing how it feels to be little in big people’s world where everything is too high for you.
The majority of people will have a hard time visualizing how it feels to be little in big people’s world where everything is too high for you. I am constantly reminded of my height, or lack of it. In the modern world there are more things that are higher up than you would like. There are vehicles that are too high to climb into. The toilet’s seat is no exception; even the washbasins are too high for a person of a child’s height. Not to mention the problem that they face in the public transport. God forbid if you have to stand, there is nowhere to anchor yourself.
You have to sway with the crowd, back and forth. Tired of stretching myself, I gave up traveling on a bus unless there was a place to sit.
I wonder how little people travel because the height of the tempo landings is so high that it is difficult even for a normal person to climb with ease. The steps leading to most shopping malls are so high it is often difficult to reach the stores. At the same time, there are more steps to climb. Often times the office buildings are on upper stories and they do not have elevators. No one seems to be bothered by it. Even the colleges and schools are not made disability friendly. I still remember the smile on Mamu Kaka’s face when the first escalator was installed in Reserve Bank of India in Calcutta, during the late sixties. “Now I can go to the bank and see what it looks like” he said as he broke into a smile.
Come to think of it, banking is a problem for little people even now. The counters are so high, sometimes I too find it difficult to look at the person on the other side and have to stand up on my toes. I am sure the ATM machines are equally difficult to operate for these small people. Even the normal kitchen counters are high. The shelves on the stores are high even for me and often I have to request someone to pull out something from a shelf. I might sound like I am making a lot of noise about something that does not need as much attention, but the fact is the wearer of the shoe knows where it pinches and it’s difficult to explain how much it hurts.
This is a tribute to Mamu Kaka for his courage in living a normal life despite his drawback, some fifty years ago. Seeing him in my dream was a kind of reawakening for me. I now understand how much it meant for him to live a life of a normal person despite the fact that he was a little person. Next time you come across a little person, won’t you extend your hand and help, knowing it will make life a little easier for the person concerned?
usha@pokharel.net
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