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Disabled..?

Paintings..! Beautiful! Stunning! Alluring!
With colours that were alive and vivacious.

Greens that spoke of a bounteous earth. Blue that expressed a deep peace within. Orange that laughed, a light green that giggled, a red that roared with feeling.

Landscapes that spoke of a peaceful world of hills and plains that blended into each other. There was no anger in those lines, just feelings of delight and happiness from a soul that was carefree and exuberant.

It was a soul that laughed with excitement.

A comely spirit within a disabled body..!

And in that same hall, a soulful voice reached out. A voice wonderfully resonant, with a melody that made my listening ears tingle with the joyful words that poured out from singers lips..!

I turned to watch the performer.

And stared into the singers sightless eyes.

With my able body, were I to paint, listless colours like those that Van Gogh used would have flowed from my whining finger. My ever complaining mind with body, nearly perfect would have only seen and expressed an imperfect world on waiting canvass. Were I to sing, would I raise notes of joy, praising my creator for seeing eyes and hearing ears, for hands that moved to my brains command, for feet that were not shapeless?

Nay, my voice more often than not, moaned with self pity, groaned with hurt, shouted in anger, whimpered in agony, lamented, complained and grumbled to a God who now pointed out those sightless eyes to me..!

Those disfigured hands, deformed feet, damaged body.

I turned away with revulsion not at those goodly souls but from the window that had given me a glimpse of my own marred, ugly one..!

He took the pen I offered and with hands that rebelled to obey, wrote message which I asked from him: 'Ability and disability,' he wrote, and his fingers struggled to pen down what his soul let forth, 'overt and covert co-exist within each of us. Disability Day should be the day to discover the disability within the able bodied and the ability within the disabled.'

He smiled as he gave me back my book where he had written his message. He had stood up to write, his crutches making mockery of his broken body, but when his soul spoke into my book, it made mockery of our frail and fragile able bodiedness!

The paintings on the walls cried out with joy!

The singing voice, all seeing, spoke to the blind in the room.

I opened notebook furtively and stared at the scribbled words.

Yes I had seen today the ability in those we call disabled, but did I have the courage to look at the disability in the able me..??

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