Roll, roll, roll your world
As people all over the world observes World Disability Day, we honour two women who have shown the courage to rise above all odds.
“Am I being written about for Disability Day?” The question has to be encountered first with a satisfying reply to get Dhanya Ravi talk more. She seems to be done with the kind of tear-jerker profiling ever since the world came to know about her and the congenital disorder Osteogenesis Imperfecta, commonly known in local parlance as brittle bone disease, she has been going through.
The wheelchair didn’t come in the way of Dhanya, for whom the last two years were happening ones. She became an actor, a busy content writer, a motivational speaker and whatnot.
No one has told her to be like this, but she chooses to remain a class apart, to be a beacon of inspiration for people of her kind. “Whatever comes my way, I take it up,” she makes her stance clear.
Dhanya’s words show how enthused she is about the release of a short video featuring her on YouTube today. It is her second time as an actor. The first opportunity came in November when she donned the greasepaint for theatre, as a parrot. She lets out a big laugh on how she got her entire face smeared by jarring colours for her character. Seated on her little-big world, she came on stage to be a part of a play.
“I was asked what I’d love to be, when I said ‘a parrot,” she smiles. That was a creative play by the Bengaluru-based organisation One Step at a Time. “There was a proportionate mix of able-bodied and disabled persons on stage and I acted as a parrot. I reached them through Amrithavarshini (an NGO for the brittle-bone affected). The short video is by Paper Planes, which is mostly about me. It lays focus on the importance of inclusive education,” she says.
It looks like launching herself on newer planes is her mantra of self-discovery. Dhanya works as a content writer for explainer videos.
For what she is today, Dhanya is hugely indebted to Amrithavarshini, headed by Latha Nair based in Thiruvananthapuram. She feels it a sacrilege if anything related to her comes without a mention of Amrithavarshini. “I started to enhance my skills in writing through malayalamsongslyrics.com. Through Amrithavarshini, I was able to reflect myself largely when I met many others with the same condition. In 2015, as an empowerment project, 12 of us wrote and cleared BPP (Bachelor Preparatory Programme, equivalent to 10+2) course through IGNOU and now I’m focused on doing online writing courses and work as a content writer,” she says.
That was it. Dhanya could not get proper schooling when kids her age went to school, came home sharing the fun time with classmates and got serious about homework and examinations. Like a divine intervention appeared Victoria at her Bengaluru residence, whom she fondly calls aunty, to get her waddle in the world of letters. “Aunty did it on a zero monetary benefit for 10 years. She came home and taught me for two hours a day. My condition denied me admission to schools. A friend of mine shared the school books with me. Later, I hopped in on Amrithavarshini, my first love and big platform,” she narrates. She had high hopes to meet her Latha aunty and friends as Amrithavarshini gathers for another get-together the coming week.
Upon completing the basic qualification, the 27-year-old went on to pursue certificate courses online. Being a child who grew fond of fairytales, with a line-up of Indian authors on her list of favourites, has many things to do with the keyboard and monitor she could handle with ease, despite the bodily pain thrown by over 250 broken bones.
“I had always something to do with writing and editing. I prefer specialising in things I do and keep studying that.”
Apart from being the professional that she is, Dhanya has a well-updated personal Facebook page, @matterofthought, and a blog. She is at peace with her choices.