Devayani was the fourth child of a family living in a remote village in Tamil Nadu. At the age of 8, Devayani contracted polio due to a severe fever. After several attempts at healing using traditional medical techniques, her family finally saved up enough money to afford a surgery from a professional doctor. Even after surgery, Devayani was disabled and could not walk without help.
Due to her disability, she was not able to go to school. When she grew older, she went to Chennai, where she found an organization for disabled people. There she learnt many skills such as as weaving, drawing, reading, tailoring, embroidery etc. After spending 7 years at this organization (Andhram Mela Sabha), Devayani was ready to go out into the world and find a job with a decent salary.
Then she heard from a few friends about Amar Seva Sangam, and immediately applied for a job there. Today, Devayani is a worker and helper at Amar Seva Sangam, and is also an independent woman who lives on her own salary. Devayani is very proud that she is now a contributing member of society.
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Devayani was born into a poor family as the youngest child of 4. She has 2 elder sisters and 1 elder brother. They lived in Tamil Nadu at the border of Kerala and had a house on the mountains that separated these two states. Though, her family was poor, her father was very entrepreneurial. He opened a small road side convenience store on the beautiful mountain. The shop was doing quite well, and he was happy about his success.
At the age of 8, Devayani got a severe fever, which left her entire body paralyzed. She couldn't mover her arms, her legs, even her neck muscles were flaccid she couldn't lift her head up. When her parents realized how severe it was, they took her to the hospital where they were told she had polio. Over a month, she slowly recovered she regained movement of her arms, even neck. However she never regained the use of her legs. Her father decided he would do whatever it takes to bring his daughter back to recovery and make her walk again. He initially went to traditional forms of medicine including Siddha, Ayurvedic, Nattu Viydham. Nothing worked. He became desperate and tried any form of therapy that anyone possibly mentioned in passing. He believed in the traditional forms of medicine, but ultimately figured these people weren't properly trained or were simply deceiving him with false hopes for their own profit. He decided the only thing for him to do was save up money and send his daughter for surgery, from a fully trained surgeon. When multiple surgeries did not give Devayani the ability to walk, her father and the rest of the family became devastated. A lot of money had been spent and the family was now barely getting by.
Though her father was in a depressed state, he was still very supportive of Devayani. Most disabled females were not taken to school, due to the inconvenience and the embarrassment. However, Devayani's father said he would carry her to school and then carry her back every day. Devayani on the other was more devastated by being seen in public with all those eyes staring at her lifeless limbs. She cried and cried, until her father had to give up hope of taking her to school. Then, he said he would try to arrange for an outside tutor to come in and teach her at home. However, due to her extreme self-consciousness, she didn't even want to be seen by a teacher. Her father was willing to accept her disability as karma, but could not accept his daughter going without an education. So, after many years of contemplating, he took Devayani to Madras where he joined her up into an organization called Andhram Mela Sabah, which housed, rehabilitated, educated and vocationally trained physically disabled people. For the first time in her life, she saw other disabled people. She realized that she wasn't the only person in the world, who couldn't walk and she even saw with her own eyes that there were people in worse physical condition than she was in.
By the time, she came to this institute, it was too late for her to go to school, she was already a young adult. Therefore, she was given vocational training in tailoring, embroidery, basket weaving, and book binding. She was also taught basic literacy, and she learned how to read and write Tamil. All this was done free of cost. AMS also arranged for her to get surgery and rehabilitation and she began walking with the use of calipers and crutches for the first time in recent memory. For the first time in her life, she interacted with people outside her family and made good friends. These young disabled girls, unlike their male counterparts did not play sports or games they passed their time by knitting together, talking and maybe playing sitting down games. It would have been too embarrassing to be seen out in a field playing games with their caliper, crutches and wheelchairs.
The 7 years she spent at AMS allowed her to gain some self-confidence and she started believing in herself. However, she felt that after 7 years, her training was finished and that she wanted to go out and get a job where she could earn her own salary. Some family members told her they had heard of a place called Amar Seva Sangam (ASSA), where they housed, rehabilitated, educated disabled children and youth. They had recently started many vocational training centers to give the disabled a chance to get a job in the workforce. She was told that she should apply for a job in their "Vocational Training Center for Book Binding and Notebook Making", where she could help teach disabled youth and also contribute in some of the production of notebooks. ASSA also had a vocational training center for tailoring and toy making but recently at AMS she was unable to do any tailoring or embroidery work because she would get extreme headaches when working in those areas.
She was given a job at ASSA and is being given a small salary. One of the most special memories she has is when she got her first pay-cheque it wasn't that she was excited about what she could buy with the money, but the cheque was recognition that she can contribute to society. Her whole life she felt like a burden especially to her family, even to those training her at AMS but now she felt that she was contributing to society. She is happy being at ASSA, she enjoys her work very much. She also stays on the ASSA campus in a room with the young disabled students and therefore, gets a chance to interact with them. She likes being busy. When she gets too much free time, she finds herself thinking about the past and she is plagued with guilt about having made her father spend thousands of rupees on her. She is also still very sensitive about her disability and if anyone non-disabled mentions something about her handicap or her legs, she becomes very upset. Therefore, she often finds herself avoiding conversations with others. At work in the Notebook Making Centre, she is the only female employee and though he feels comfortable working with them, she limits her conversation with others to work related matters. However, she enjoys showing up at work, doing her duty and leaving without undue disturbance.
She feels there are not many people at ASSA like her (40 year old, disabled female) as most of the disabled females at ASSA are children, youth and young adult trainees. Almost all of the disabled employees (staff) are males. Therefore, she sometimes finds it hard to connect with people and make friends. She feels the fact that she is female has restricted her in life a lot more. For example, if a disabled male wanted to go out he could get helpers to carry him back and forth. In Indian society, no male helper would carry a female and there aren't many female helpers around who would be able to carry a disabled adult. Men are also more prone to marry in traditional Indian way of arranged marriage and thus it is very difficult for parents of a disabled girl to find a family willing to marry their son to him. Devayani credits her family for showing her great support. Even now, her sisters' and brother's family including her nephews and nieces are very helpful. Every two months, someone from her family visits her and spends a few days with her. On holidays, she has also been picked up by her sister and taken to her parents' house where she spent time with them. Devayani wants to stay at ASSA as long as she can. She feels safe in her family's promise that whenever she feels she can no longer be at ASSA, that they would take her in to their house and take care of her.
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