Born A Dwarf,Stand Tall

BORN A DWARF,STAND TALL.

Dwarf was a very cute term for me until I understood the true meaning of the word,the word having not so happy meaning is a person who is short or commonly called little people,little people usually suffer from a disorder which is known as dwarfism which usually means abnormally low stature or small sized.

I came across an unusually small person or a dwarf I gathered the courage to go to her and talk to her.I broke the ice with her and when she became comfortable I asked her about her difficulties and the list was endless.

She started with how she was the only dwarf in her family born to a not so rich family,she was not treated very well in her family as well as she was an exception.She was bullied in her school days as well,people used to think that she was some circus joker,she was bullied,called by names.She felt as if she was on display everyday be it grocery shopping or going to the market,the attention she got involved staring,pointing and giving outright derogatory comments,people treated her as if she was not a human but a different species.Somehow she managed to manouvre her way through the crowds,she used to hold on to peoples bags and let other people push her into the compartments,roads,etc,everything she did was an ordeal,there was no place where she did not had to suffer to get in or out of somewhere.She applied for jobs but people looked at her and thought she was useless as she could not fetch things which were kept at a certain height,they thought she could not sit on a regular chair and work,”they were not wrong”,said by the dwarf lady herself.She could not even use public washrooms,she had accepted the life as it was as adds,”nobody is listening to us”.

She faces problems which other people don’t even give a second thought to,for example door handles are placed too high for them,they are placed at a distance which is easy for an average height adult to reach,public transport do not have ramps for their access,”we have problems similar to wheelchair disabled people”.The most heartbreaking situation is that they can’t even find clothes which they like fot them,shoes are also a problem as only sometimes the shoes which are made for children fit and most of the times they also dot fit as their feet are broad from the front.

This story made me research more about dwarfs in India and how they are treated so I reasearched and found some of the successful dwarfs but the problems and the insensitivity towards them was the same.

The story of Harendra Trivedi,Indias first World Dwarf Table Tennis Champion.” My friend laughed at me and said, ‘you are shorter than the table tennis table. You will never be able to play’. I felt very insulted and I could not sleep that night. I made up my mind that I would somehow learn the game.”

The story of DR. LAKSHMIPRADHA SRINIVASAN,she was born a dwarf but today she stands tall as a doctor.” She was teased mercilessly by other children when she was young. She hated school. Yet, she went on to not only study medicine but also to win the hearts of all her colleagues and co-workers. Meet the lady who did not let her short stature come in the way of her standing tall. “

The story of Mathew is a dwarf, a "little taller than a broadsheet newspaper" in his own words. "People think we are circus jokers. They do not take us seriously, said 40-year-old Mathew, who won six medals, including two gold, at the recently concluded World Dwarf Games, also known as the Olympics of Little People, in Toronto, Canada.

To conclude there are all types of people and we need to show some humanitarian behaviour towards them and be a little sensitive,”there is a need of social awareness and public sensitization,they are laughed at,stereotyped for jobs and discriminated against different spheres-this needs to be corrected.