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