A Flight on Broken Wings: An Autobiography

Sumitra Mehrol was a mere child when she was struck with polio. Her parents, struggling to make ends meet, coping with a growing family, were not able to give her the attention she needed to be fully cured. Nor was medical care readily available or a reliable diagnosis easy to access. As a result, the illness remained largely unattended and Sumitra grew up with a disability, facing scorn, often insults, from many around her. When combined with the fact of her belonging to a Dalit family, something she began to understand as she grew into adulthood, Sumitra was left even more vulnerable. ‘All my life,’ she says, ‘I have intimately known the pain, the fear and the suffering of a life lived on the margins. I am a woman, a disabled person, a Dalit.’  In this honest, unsparing and deeply moving account, Sumitra describes her life and her struggle to cope. She speaks of what it means to have the aspiration to merely live an ordinary life, the desire to do ordinary things —study, have friends, fall in love, take up a job, marry, have children—and seeks answers from society for the rules it makes, the expectations it sets and the deep prejudices it hides.

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Sumitra Mehrol is an associate professor at Shyam Lal College (evening) in Delhi. She has a doctorate in Hindi literature from Delhi University. Her writings, including poems, short stories and prose, have been published in a range of magazines and journals, including Hans, Kathadesh, Anyatha, Yudhrat Aam Aadmi, Pakhi, Bayan, and others. She has published books on the writings of Nagarjuna and Amritlal Nagar. Her stories and poems have also been broadcast on All India Radio. She has recently published a collection of short stories titled Dalit aur Viklang Jeevan ki Kahaniyan.

Urvashi Butalia is a feminist publisher and writer. Head of Zubaan (set up in 2003 when Kali for Women shut down), she writes and publishes widely on issues relating to women and gender. Among her best-known publications is the award-winning oral history of Partition, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India.