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Six and a half years back I am at a car accident. I was travelling from Balochistan to my hometown Raheem Yar Khan. The diver slept and the car fell in the ditch. As a result of this incident I sustained multiple injuries. The list is bit long don’t get scared. The right arm was fractured. Shoulder bone and Collar bone was fractured. Lungs and liver were badly injured. The whole ribcage was injured. But the injury that changed my life and my personality completely was the spinal cord injury. Three vertebra of my back bone was completely crushed. Its took an hour and so to find an ambulance in Balochistan all the efforts wenting vain because we couldn’t find an ambulance. So I was thrown in the back of Potohar Jeep. And I was rushed to the nearby Hospital. In that jeep I realized that half of the body was fractured and the half was paralysed. We were rushed to the nearby Hospital. There we came to know there was no first aid I was kicked out. Then I went to another hospital in my hometown where doctor said take her away we could not operate her. I was like “Why”???? and they were like we don’t have equipment she will die someday you go, I was kicked out again. But a finally am adopt in comparative bureve Hospital in Karachi. Luckily I wasn’t kicked out. Probably that’s why I am alive.
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So I stayed in that Hospital for two and half months. I under went three major and two minor surgeries. The doctors have put a lot of metal in my arm, a lot of metal in my backbone. So I feel more like an iron lady now. But those two and a half months that I spent in the Hospital were dreadful.
I was in severe pain both physically and psychologically. Many people left, very closed ones. The ones who were supposed to stay with me were the ones who left when I needed them the most. I was devastated, life was completely pointless, aimless, colorless. I was tired of the white scrub looking at the white walls doing nothing sitting idle. I really didn’t want to live but than I realized that instead of crying for the people who were not meant to be with me. And for the legs which I have lost. I have people around me who want to see me alive. I have so much to be greatfull for. So, let stop cripping stop whyning because its pointless.
The best decision that I took in my entire life was the painting that I made in the hospital with a deformed hand. That’s how I edit colors in my colorless life. That’s how this adversity helped me in exploring an artist in me. That’s how this art kept me alive through this whole journey. Than I was moved to Islamabad, I stayed in my room on the bed confine the two years. Because I developed multiple pressure ulcer and our idea of infections and energies.
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Now this whole journey of two years and two and a half months being bed resting doing nothing. The only thing that kept me alive was art. What a beautiful medium art is that without offering a single word you can express yourselves.
But the day I start on wheel chair for the first time. I was a completely different person. I still remember that I look myself on the mirror and I said you cannot wait for miracle and come to make you walk. You cannot wait for the sense of treatment because its very expensive. You cannot sit in the corner of the room crying and begging for the mercy. Because people don’t have time. So the only thing that I could do was to accept myself the way I was sooner the better. That’s what I did. I really want to make myself financially strong. Lets become professional. I started to find some jobs. A very good friend of mine find a status on facebook that we want contents writer. I write comment “I wish I Could”. I was called for that interview and I was hired as one of the content writers for Pakistan first official websites. Salman Taseer(late) was the CEO. That’s how I started my professional career. So I was becoming financially strong and stable. Content writing was good. I was constantly exhibiting my work in different galleries. I was flourshing as an artist. Life was easy but I wasn’t happy because I was constantly aiming high I was thinking big. I didn’t know what how am gonna do. But I know one day do something big for the people and for the country.
One day I came across the polio campaign advertisment image. The little boy from a very under previlaged family sitting on wheel chair and with his father sitting with him crying and saying to the world in that campaign to give polio drops to your kids. Otherwise they will become like him. That advertisment shoot me from inside. I feel devastated, the way that boy was objectified as an album of grief, misery, mercy, lifelessness, nothingness. Such a wrong picture which was highlighting media about the persons with disabilities. That’s what we were called.
That was the day when I decided to change the perception of the people about being on wheel chair.
