A heart to heart chat with disability campaigner and celebrated singer Ritika Sahni at Kolkata’s Wisdom Tree cafe.

Cinema for a cause on the Trinayani Trail, getting more aware about how to manage disability with great positivity and the right spirit.

So I’ve been working in the field of disability for the last 30 years.

I started my career as a musician and as a uh uh disability campaigner, way back in the 90s.

Having worked in the sector for many years, having worked with premier organizations uh across the country, I realized in about uh in late 2000’s thousands that that um if the lives of people with disabilities have to change, it is very important that people who are not disabled were made aware of the strengths and weaknesses and desires and needs of people with disabilities.

It was important that they challenge their own stereotypes that were there on their mind, because only then, the lives of people with disabilities would improve or there would be progress in that, in their lives.

And so, in 2006, um I decided to start Trinayani as an out and out advocacy driven organization.

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You must be wondering, ‘why Trinayani?’

Now, uh, as I said, since I’ve been working for such a long time, Trinayani, we know, means uh the deity with a third eye, eh in Shiva it means consciousness, in Durga it means knowledge, in Kali it’s intuitive power.

Trinayani is also the goddess who fights social justice with ten hands.

So when we, when I was working in the sector, before the, before Trinayani was uh created, I would be doing so many things, you know, literally had so much on my plate, running around trying to convince policy makers, trying to convince uh parents and teachers and corporate uh uh professionals, um when the time came to name the organization, my trustees, very jokingly said, ‘you know what, let’s call it Trinayani’.

Uh so um Trinayani, so that we can awaken our third eye.

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Established in 2006, the mission is to honor, include and empower persons with disabilities.

Our core objective is to bring about change in the lives of people with disabilities, but we do so, by grabbing the attention of the non-disabled people and trying to change their perceptions and mindsets, getting them to challenge their own stereotypes, and perhaps by informing them, we hope they would make a leap from fear and confusion to acceptance and understanding.

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We started very humbly with three trustees.

Rakesh Sahni is the Vice-chairman, Mr. Indranil Goswami is the Chairman, and I, of course, am the peon…and the secretary, and uh and, and the trainer, and the consultant, so uh uh, I’m also there.

Besides three of us, we heavily depend upon consultants and advisors from the disability sector who come on board, uh, at times professionally, at times on a voluntary capacity.

We have many many volunteers, and of course all my friends join in to be part oh ah of what we try to do.

In my organization, since we also run another, uh, small unit called the Sparsh Foot Spa, I have one employee who is blind, who is a massage therapist and also looks into the administration of the organization.

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So earlier we had the Persons with Disabilities Act which recognized 7 disabilities, but in 2016, there was a new act, The Rights for Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, which actually, and you’ll be surprised about this, uh it now recognizes 21 disabilities.

Uh the newer ones are autism, uh Parkinson’s, um, acid attack survivor, learning disabilities, so, as far as and, and of course, um, I’m sure if there was another act that would be new disabilities that would be incorporated but currently, Government recognizes 21 disabilities.

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As I mentioned earlier, the aim of all our awareness sessions is to break down the negative images that are entrenched in the minds of people without disabilities, thereby generating understanding and helping them move away from pity.

Now, the essence of awareness is the realization that in this huge world, there are amazing people, all living different lives, and for us, we’re forever trying, through all our initiatives, we’re trying to convey the message that disability is a difference, it’s not a disadvantage.

So, that’s something until we realize that, it’ll become very difficult for us to include people with disabilities.

So, idea is, to um be aware of oneself and the other.

The idea is also not to “other” people.

The number one thing that I always like to tell um our friends, our parents, um, who have uh children with special needs and disabilities is, “that you are not alone’.

There are people, there are support systems, there are professionals who are there to help you.

Number two, I think it’s extremely important as a parent for you to realize that you should aim for self-reliance in your child.

That should be your basic aim.

Be aware of the child’s capabilities, do not overprotect the child, do not under-utilize the child’s potentialities and allow your child to be part of all life situations, that’s very very important.

No matter what you are going through, no matter what you feel looking at your child, be aware that education is the answer for everybody, including your child who has a disability.

Celebrate the smaller achievements.

I know, at times we get very frustrated, parents get frustrated, ‘there is so much I’m doing, 24 hours I’m working with a child, and the child doesn’t seem to understand’. Remember, depending upon the disability your child has, you might not get the reaction that you are, you know, looking out for.

But the child is imbibing, is imbibing subtly, is imbibing subconsciously.

And every time your child gives you some kind of an indication of having learned something, rejoice that.

Don’t wait for the bigger picture.

Rejoice these smaller achievements that you have.

Also remember, do not get bogged down by the reactions of the typical parents.

And by typical parents I mean, there are parents around you who don’t have children with disabilities.

There are parents of the non-disabled children.

At times, you know, I think as a parent who has a disabled child, you get very bogged down with what that other person is thinking, do not do that.

Don’t get bogged down with that.

You’re doing great.

Do not get bogged down.

And most importantly, you also deserve your own happiness.

Do not feel guilty when you have an enjoying moment in your life, when you go out for a walk, when you go for a movie, when you, when you meet your friends, do not feel guilty.

You owe it to be happy yourself.

A happy mother is always a great mother to be around, irrespective of whether a child is disabled or not.

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A very interesting question, because I think what happens with most of us, uh those who are uh typically uh growing or non-disabled, is that we don’t go to colleges, we don’t go to school, we don’t have people around us, so we don’t really interact so often with people with disabilities.

And our association with disability or awareness about disability, at times is minimal or non-existent.

Let me give you a couple of tips which will help you, perhaps make friends and reach out to someone with a disability.

Number 1, don’t be awkward, uh eh in front of somebody, if you happen to come across with someone with a disability.

Do not say something like, ‘oh no, how did it happen?’ or ‘you’re so brave, (sucks air), so sad’.

Don’t use such words because disability is a natural condition of human existence.

It can happen to anybody anywhere anytime.

So remember, some children are born with disabilities but any one of us, all you wonderful people watching this, you could become disabled at any point of life, at any point in your life.

Um, be careful about the words you use.

Remember, words are powerful and without you realizing it, they could hurt somebody or they could boost up someone’s self-esteem.

So, do not use words like um uh ‘burden’, ‘afflicted’, ‘suffering’, because someone with a disability might not be suffering, someone with a disability might not have uh uh, might not be not healthy, might be a very healthy person uh and on the other hand someone like me, looking very healthy could be heavily diabetic.

So, you, you know, don’t use that words.

Um, don’t use words like ‘deaf and dumb’, it’s an absolute no-no.

Do not say wheelchair-bound, because someone who uses a wheelchair actually uses it for mobility, so he/she is a wheelchair user.

So be careful about the language that you eh uh that you use.

Um, also, I think what’s very important is, reach out uh to people uh you don’t know, because that’s the exciting thing about um knowledge,

When you are talking to somebody with different experiences, then you, you become more mindful of their circumstances, and that’s what leads to empathy.

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As a consultant, and uh trainer in disability inclusion, at Trinayani I spearhead most of the initiatives.

Also very important, since we work in the field of disability and we’re talking about persons with disabilities, at Trinayani we actually adhere to this whole concept of ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’, so we have friends with disabilities, self-advocates, who work along with us in most of our projects.

The first thing that we do is that we curate and design sensitization campaigns and sensitization workshops, for the academic community and for the corporate sector.

We have so far done some very interesting workshops for Air India, for Indigo Airlines, for Yes Bank, um for uh L’Oreal and we’ve done a very interesting disability awareness campaign and uh uh a year-long disability awareness campaign for 4 Delhi Public Schools across the country.

That was one of our most important uh projects in the last couple of years.

So, a lot of sensitization, so I have a lot of people coming to me to especially …curate or design it, according to their needs.

Secondly, we have a radio show on disability.

Since we work across disabilities, we work with children and adults with across disabilities.

The radio show has, we, in the radio show, we talk about subjects uh which are as varied as disability and sexuality or disability and sports, disability and entertainment or disability and education.

And um we broadcast these radio shows on Air India Radio, and they’re now available on SoundCloud.

Thirdly, we do a lot of collaboration and a lot of networking.

For example, in 2019, um, we partnered with Election Commission of India to create a film and to create brochures that they widely used, uh to inspire disabled people to come and vote, and they will continue to be used.

We have um a spa that we run which we started in 2011, which is called the Sparsh Foot Spa that was to “walk the talk”.

So the spa is actually run and managed by trained blind reflexology massage therapists.

It is inside our organization in Bombay and we’re running it for the last 11 years, which is our livelihood initiative.

We also run the eh inclusive band called Pehli Baarish.

As a performer, as a singer myself, I lead the band and all my musicians uh are uh trained, skillful, professional, either have visual impairment or other disabilities and we regularly perform for whoever invites us uh for performances.

Um besides these very interesting things, something that we do throughout is create poems, create uh awareness games, awareness literature.

Um our latest one which I would love, like to mention because that’s something which is a unique um fun card game kit that we’ve created for the academic community. The National Education Policy, if you’re aware, the recent National Education Policy makes a lot of emphasis on teacher preparation and on disability education in teacher, teacher preparation.

So this particular kit, which has six card games and an awareness magazine, worksheets and an original story will help teachers to understand the broad spectrum or orient them to the broad uh uh world of people with disabilities in a very fun and entertaining and low pressure way.

With the radio show, we also create short films and the idea is to have these role model films for our parents with disabilities or for the world to know, uh the capabilities and the achievements uh uh or the simple life situations that our friends with disabilities go through.

I I would take this opportunity to also reach out to all my interesting viewers that uh at Trinayani we’re always looking out for networking and collaborating with like-minded NGOs, like-minded organizations, uh like-minded clubs, societies, I, they could be anybody who would allow us to push the subject of disability into the public domain.

For example, uh we immediately said yes to the Kala Ghoda Art Festival that happens in in Bombay, or we were, we were invited eh, we were invited for the Hindustan Petroleum uh uh HPCL Diversity Inclusion month where we played our Snakes & Ladders game, with the students, with the non-disabled uh uh children of the colony.

We took our game kit to an architecture uh college or we took our game kit to the and we played it with bus conductors of Panjim.

Everybody, no matter what you do or what profession you are in, you need to be able to understand the fact that disability does not mean incompetence.

Disability is not a disadvantage.

And people with disabilities need to be included.

So the decision making done by the 90 % of the population who are not disabled has to be inclusive.

You have to include people with disabilities and for that, it becomes easier for us at Trinayani to collaborate with anybody, it could be bus conductors of Panjim, it could be nurses of Tata Memorial Hospital, it could be the railway uh officials, it could be the airline officials, eh it, it could be artists, photographers, film-makers.

Let me share something with you, um we had a film-maker friend who wanted to create a film on disability, uh a fiction film on disability, with a character who had disability.

And I liked the fact that he came to us because he wanted to know the reality of what it is like to be deaf.

So that, when that film is watched by millions of people in the country, they were getting the right portrayal of the disability.

Because films are so powerful, if you give a wrong message, then with the already wrong stereotypes that you have in mind, that film reiterates the wrong stereotype.

So it’s so important, everybody, no matter in what profession you are, you need to be very responsible of how you’re portraying disability, because all of us, whether we like it or not, we are very influenced by the media, by what we read in the papers, so everything, what is written about disability has to be with responsibility.

What you show about disability has to be with responsibility.

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There are two kinds of champs, the first champion of Trinayani, the first champions of Trinayani are my friends with disabilities.

All my self-advocate friends who come on board with us and we do a session call um ‘Ask Me Anything’, because remember, when you’re disabled, you’re an expert simply by experience.

So we call our expert champions with disability to come on board, in most of our Trinayani initiatives.

So, they are one champion.

The other champion I would say are my friends or anybody who at some point of time takes a moment, pauses and says, ‘I tell you what, let me give it a shot. Let me admit a child with a disability in my school. Uh, let me give employment to a person who has a disability’, they are my champions.

All those people who take a pause, who use their privileges to right a wrong, who use their privileges not only to do best for themselves but for those who are behind in the rows.

So they are also Trinayani champions.

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I would say journey so far and ahead, for us, at Trinayani will continue to be creating awareness.

That is our tagline, creating awareness about disability.

Um the first step towards anything is to change one’s mindset, is to change our perceptions and I think it is the slowest process, so we are going to be in business for long.

Not that we want to, but we will be because eh it, it takes concentrated effort to reach out to people and ask them to think differently.

So, we will continue to create and use the medium of arts and performance and puppetry and theater and poems to reach out to the non-disabled population of our country and ask them and urge them, to not only think about how different we are but also give pause and think about how common, what are the commonalities between us.

And I think that’s where you will realize that we’re one big happy world and the differences are all only in the mind.

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Akkha duniya gol hai

Yahan koi nahi aisa soul hai

Jo kabhi nahi hua ho pareshaan

Akkha duniya gol hai

Yahan koi nahi aisa soul hai

Jo kabhi nahi hua ho pareshaan

Paseena bahaoge, tabhi manzil ko paoge

Ye hai duniya duniya duniya meri jaan

Is mele ki bheer mein ho jaon na gum

Tumme hain kahi khoobiyan

Sach mein unique ho tum

Duniya degi tumko pyaar

Kyunki tum single piece ho mere yaar

Duniya degi tumko pyaar

Kyunki Tum single piece ho mere yaar

Akkha duniya gol hai

Yahan koi nahi aisa soul hai

Jo kabhi nahi hua ho pareshaan

Paseena bahaoge, tabhi manzil ko paoge

Ye hai duniya duniya duniya meri jaan

Ye hai duniya duniya duniya meri jaan

Ye hai duniya duniya duniya meri jaan