Disability and My Identity

[Applause]

hello everyone

uh grafton uh

my name is arjen sashteva

and if you see these legs

they tell you a story if you see these

scars they tell you

a story and

half of my burnt body beneath these

clothes tell you a story

the story of an insurmountable pain

and suffering assumingly

the story of a tragedy

but if i had one chance in life to go

back and alter a few things so that

i do not have to go through that tragedy

would i do it

i would still choose this just this

disability

because that is my story a story

of great determination

audacity and hope

it was uh 3rd march 2002

uh in a small city of chalander

when i was playing uh at the terrace of

my father’s shop

i accidentally touched uh 11 000 volts

wires

with the two fingers of my right hand

a shock enough to have killed six people

before me

a shock enough

to light up an entire area

as my body felt the jolts the sparkles

from the wire

fell on the grass and my whole body

caught fire

so i was getting electric shock

and my whole body was burning but i was

nine years old

i had zilch clue what i was going

through and all i was worried about

that i am going to get some hiding from

my mom for putting myself in trouble

again

and i slowly fainted into darkness

only to wake up to find

my entire body burning i could see if

i could feel the flames coming out of my

back typically a nine years old child

has

a foot of this size my foot

had shrunk to a size of a pebble due to

the electric shock

and somehow i gathered the courage to

drag myself to

the edge and screamed for help and i was

lucky enough to get it

i was lucky enough to have touched those

wires with my right hand and not my left

hand because it would have caused an

immediate heart failure and i would not

be standing here and talking to you all

21 days after the electric shock

my legs had to be amputated

and i was blessed with a new life

while there are many ways in which i can

tell you

my narrative i choose to pick three

stories of my life

the first story of coping mechanisms

now this was back in 2002 when

political correctness was not really a

thing i was called

a bachara al-angara

i was told that i was not good enough

and i would be sitting in bed throughout

my life

or on the other side of the spectrum i

was told that

you are a brave boy you had god’s

special child

i was sum of tar and i was even taken to

puja’s

and i could comprehend what did i do

to deserve to be called as a brave boy

i was not i just did whatever it took to

survive

i was on the neither end of the spectrum

my father was told which essentially

means that i was

my fate was to just sit on a cash

counter at my father’s shop

and i was and even spending money on my

schooling was going to be off of waste

and of course you would have even

experienced that during lockdown

sitting at home is one thing sitting in

bed the entire day for

five to six months it’s it’s super

agitating and

and my family of course took that

brunt from me

until one day my mom told me

so what if you don’t have legs you have

hands

go fetch your own water

and i was quite agitated i went to the

kitchen

i used my hands i scrolled and somehow i

reached kitchen and i realized the glass

was not accessible i went back to the

room

put a pillow stood on it got my water

that small act

was liberating

that small act of wisdom

has proven time and again that

all i need to do was do things

differently

i put now this was still

seven eight months in into my amputation

and i took my dad’s shoe

filled cotton in it i was not aware of

prosthetics and this is one reason i

wear shorts in public

so that no other sergeant is sitting not

being aware of

prosthetics i put cotton in my dad’s

shoe

i stood on that and i said i was ready

for school

but of course the result wasn’t pretty

what disability meant for me was doing

things differently

that’s it nothing is impossible

just do things differently this clicked

again to me

when i was in gurgaon for my own

treatment and i was alone

my card is hand driven and

i was sitting in my car without legs and

the wheelchair was

in the boot and i asked for a god’s help

to sort of help me take out the

wheelchair because

the boot would open only from the

outside

and he pretended as if he didn’t hear me

it happened again and again

and i figured out that i’ll have to

spend the entire night in my car

okay i’m quite a mini version so i can

fit easily in a car

but next day morning alarms

started to hit then

and i had to find a way to get out of

the car but i would not ask for help

i went back i hopped at the back seat of

my car

sort of unhooked the seat uh

unassembled the wheelchair somehow

and i i put one wheel out then

another wheel out then the wheelchair

reassembled it

and proudly went to the loop

it struck me again

that i could do things albeit

differently

i don’t have both the lats muscle and of

course

both the legs are missing so my right

lats was burnt in the accident and the

left lat muscle was

surgically implanted in my right leg

it’s a bit like complicated with me

so i was told that i cannot swim

in fact nobody was even ready to coach

me

but i was determined to swim so what i

would do

i would take the end of pajama tie to

the stairs around the pool

and just try to stay afloat i just had

to do things differently

and once i learned how to float on my

own

that is when i got the coaching i

started to swim

disability just meant doing things

differently for me

and i was not going to be the boy with

disability

i was going to be more which brings me

to my second story

about being more

whenever a tragedy happens to us

we can either succumb to the

circumstances

blame the circumstances why were those

wires

accessible to me in the first place i

was nine years old

that means they were at this height they

were 11 000 volts wires and six people

had died from their five they were there

in the first place

but that is not what i chose

i chose option number two which is

we all can write our own life’s

narratives

we all can choose to act differently in

circumstances

so that we can look back at our story

and tell ourselves that we are good

enough

and i wrote my own narrative the

narrative

of not just being a boy

with disability but narrative of being

more

of course i didn’t survive 11 000 volts

current just to be a boy with disability

i had to be more

i studied hard to score a near perfect

score

in my post exams i studied hard

to crack the best commerce college in

the country srcc

and even if it meant studying for longer

hours

even if my body didn’t allow that even

if it meant

staying independently in delhi

when i was so dependent on my on my

mother and my brother

for all the chores

i didn’t settle there

i chose to go to the best management

institute in the country

i am bangalore i am andhrabadins can

debate that but

i chose to go to the best management

college in the country even if it meant

every day climbing four stairs of my

coaching center

four floors of my coaching center and

getting badly wounded

i could have chosen an easy job i rather

chose

to work at one of the most valuable

firms on earth

that kept me on my toes with all the

puns intended

because

i am not meant to be shaken

i am unbroken

which brings me to my third story

i was told that i cannot be loved that i

was not acceptable in the society

that my legs had a problem

the one voice i rather chose was of

defiance

that was not who i am and i was going to

change that

so for me walking even a few steps

is an odd deal i’d rather

walked a 5 kilometer marathon after i

was told so

even if it tore my leg apart

it bled

uh by the way i was the last one to

finish proudly so

even if it tore my leg apart

i finished it and while people were

cheering for me

the only thing i could hear was my

heartbeat

telling me that i was not

unacceptable i was acceptable

and i didn’t have any problem in my legs

five kilometer i was not going to settle

for that

was i 10 kilometer 21 kilometer

at better timing i kept on continuing

and i’m not going to settle at that even

i will do full marathon very soon

i aspire to be a tight lead

it’s okay if it doesn’t happen but i

aspire to be one

i rather chose to do things differently

and if normal burp is involved

jumping and falling i would rather take

off my legs and do the same activity

can we have that video

so all my workouts were designed

differently for me so that i could do

things

some workouts i do after removing my

legs and some are

with legs you were a bunch of

youngsters and i’m not sure if you would

have seen rocky balboa but

there’s one quote and i’ll close after

that

life ain’t all about sunshine and

rainbows

it’s a very mean and nasty place and i

don’t care how tough you are

it will beat you to your knees and will

keep you there permanently

if you let it but nobody’s ever

hit as hard as life

and it’s not about how hard you’re hit

it’s about how hard you can

get hit and still keep moving forward

and that is how winning is done thank

you