Question- Analysis of Trying to Grow' by Firdaus Kanga.

Answer - 

Firdaus Kanga's Trying to Grow' (1990) is a narrative Firdaus Kanga was born into a Parsi family in Bombay in 1959. He was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, commonly known as "brittle bone syndrome" which resulted in him having several painful fractures throughout childhood. "I was born with brittle bones, could never walk or go to school with sturdy little boys who might break my tiny body with a friendly slap on the back. I stopped growing at about four feet", wrote Kanga ("South Asia"). "Trying to Grow" is a semi autobiographical work that traces the story of Brit Kotwal from childhood to early adulthood. It is a story of boy who is acutely aware of his marginal identity as he negotiates with family, society and his own emerges. sexuality.

Like the author, Brit is a boy with osteogenesis imperfecta who, his doctor confirmed, would break his bones often, would never walk, would never have teeth and if he survived at all, would grow to be only four feet tall. The only "silver linning" according to the doctor was that "the disease would burn itself out by the time he was in his late teens".

The novel opens with Brit's father taking him to a holy man called Wagh Babu in the hope that he would be able to core him. While from the beginning Sera, Brit's mother, perceives him as a normal person with a "problem", Brit's father, Sam is unable to do the same. He looks rueful and sad when he talks about Brit and tries every possible "remedy" for Brit's osteogenesis imperfecta. These include not only frequent visits to doctor but also ingestion of pulverized pearls and bone marrow of goat the rubbing of almond oil on the legs, Parsi prayers, the services of a woman who claimed she should cure Brit with electricity generated from her body, and finally, the blessings of the dubious Wagh Baba. Sam's attitude towards Brit's disability reflects the influence of the medical model on most people in india and their struggle to bring a semblance of "normality" or improved functionality to the lives of disabled people they may be close to and concerned about.

Sam's wish to "cure" pervades Brit's life even as he is sheltered and cocooned by his family. Members of his family are only too willing to "help" Brit go on with his life. They readily push his wheelchair, bring him books down from high shelves, rush him to the hospital whenever he breaks a bone. Even though it is taken for granted that Brit can never go to school or college, his middle class family ensures he receives the best education they can afford. Brit is offered a world steeped in books, music and art everything he needs for intellectual stimulation, almost as if to make up for his lack of physical mobility. But all of this is done for Brit without asking for his opinion. People do what they think he needs. As Brit puts it himself:

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whenever he had to go somewhere important Sam coashed me. It was safer. As for dressing, one would believe it, but till I was fourteen I came out of may both naked and laydown on a bath mat, spread over my bed. Then Sera or Dolly would sprinkle me with tale all over, cooing. "Now lift your arms. Turn on your stomach". Then they'd tuck me into clothes and brush my hair with a baby blue baby's hairbrush. I was capable of doing all this myself.

What Brit seems to stress is the infantalization and resultant loss of subjectivity that disabled people often have to face. This happens mostly within the embrace of family and friends who are entirely well-meaning but unconscious of their discriminatory attitudes.

Moreover, Sam's attitude toward Brit's disability reiterates some of the most common notions regarding disabled people in Indian society. Sam tells Brit:

fractures for a few more years. Then I suppose you'll study but you won't get job ..... I see young boys who come to the bank with their applications. Some of them have their MAS and they are healthy and good looking; they are trying for a job that will pay them eight hundred rupees a month. And they don't even get that. Then you are going to need girls, you are going to get reality frusty when you can't have them.

Thus while Sam sees Brit as intellectually capable, he feels that he is a misfit in a deeply competitive world and that his disability will cause him to live a miserable life without a job or romantic love. The insights of the social model which point out how the world at work is imagined and participated in primarily by the able-bodied populace and isolates the disabled, can help to understand Sam's concern. As Brit puts it, "when you can't do some things people feel you can't do anything". The ingraining of body image issue in disabled people also often begins with the family and immediate society. Although Sam doesn't realize it, Sam's insistence that "healthy" and "good looking" boys were not getting jobs implies that Brit's neither healthy nor good looking. This goes a long way in accentuating Brit's dislike for his body; it is only after several years of battling excruciating body image issues that, in the last line of the novel Brit can assert "there are some things we just can't believe. I liked the way I looked". Moreover, although Sam does not perceive Brit as a sexual as his aunt Jeroo does, he nevertheless believes that Brit will never have the satisfaction of romantic or sexual relationships with women and even Sera believes the same. She insists that Brit will be her "bachelor boy" although he resists the thought.

Asimilar attitudes permeats the minds of Brit's friends and the society he lives in. When Brit's cousin, Tina, who is hearing impaired falls in love with a boy, Brit and his friend Ruby contemplate the tactics they should use to convince Tina's mother to allow her to marry the boy she loves. Ruby says, "If she loses Rohit, she'll probably never find anyone else. You know how it is for handicapped people. Ruby is quick to apologize but she occupies the position of Garland-Thomson's "normate". She redues "handicapped people" to their impairments and fails to perceive the other facets of their personality that make them who they are. Her chance comment also reveals how deeply certain ableist notions concerning romantic love and what constitutes the desirable are ingrained in society. Moreover, certain norms and codes that define modern dating and the idea of being in love excluds certain categories of people. Consider, for example, Brit's own thoughts regarding Tina:

"But I knew, I didn't really want Tina. Not the way you want a girl when you're fifteen. Because then you have got to have everything just right- soft music and poetry and whishpered something. And they wouldn't have worked their magic on her ears. I didn't want a deaf girlfriend even though she was a gorgeous girl and a fabulous friend".

Even as a young boy fighting and resisting badges of asexuality and the impossibility of romantic love attributed to him by society. Brit falls into the same trap when thinking of a possible romantic partner. There is only one "normal" model available for expressing and exploring love that he can access and a girl like Tina does not fit into it on account of her disability.

One particular scene in the novel details the several facets of people's anxiety their varied attitudes to disabled people in general and in particular, the anxiety regarding disabled people as desiring subjects or objects of desire. The scene unfolds when Brit and his girlfriend. Amy, Kiss on the beach:

They were discussing us, as if we were the clouds or the sea or the rocks. 'What does she see in him?"

'Pity?'

'God will reward her'.

'May be he is rich.'

'I wouldn't take him if he were rich as the Birlas?

...............................

'Such people,' said someone, 'are often God's favourites: that is why he makes them different."

You are wrong, wrong. He is punished.'

You must n't laugh' someone said to the urchins. 'Or the next time you are born, you will be as unfortunate as him.'

At least they should not come out, such people. Then loving in public it's to much.

...............................

Then the man in the dhoti said, 'May be something is wrong with her inside, we can't see it. That's why she has to marry this cripple. She can't find anyone else."

The above passage shows how these religious ideas play out in the day- to-day lives of disabled people. Not only do they become objects of the stare and often unsolicited pity, but the motives and health of there are also questioned when they happen to be non-disabled like Amy.

As Kanga's naunced narrative has already shown, even disabled people sometimes fall into the trap of being biased against other forms of disability and would rather have non-disabled partners. This happen because we have been brought up in a culture where 'desirable' almost always means "able bodied". This view is often internalized by people with disabilities and may lead to issues such as low self esteem and self-confidence, negative body image and feelings of incompleteness and unworthiness of companionship, sex, love and marriage. In this context, it is also important to note how in the narrative, Brit takes pride in the upper half of his body, often drawing the reader's attention to his broad shoulders and chest and his charming smile while constantly using negative epithets for the lower part of his body. This . and Brit's continual accentuation of his intellectual superioroty could be read as resistance and unwillingness to identifying with his disabled body.

In contrast to Ruby's encounters with Brit, which makes him extremely conscious and ashamed of his body. Cyrus offers Brit a refreshing change from the very beginning of their friendship. While he has to put on "The Brave Act" in front of people like Ruby, the entry of Cyrus marks the first chapter of the section of his life called Trying to Grow." He lets Brit wheel himself unless he asks for help, tells him that it is okay for grown men to cry and asks him "Why the fuck should you bother?" about the difference in their bodies. Unlike other people, he actually asks Brit what hewants. Cyrus is also the first person who, to Brit's delight can stimulate him intellectually and outsmart him when it comes to words. They soon become partners in what Cyrus calls "the serious business of living". With Cycus he dares to experience many things for the first time like going very close to the sea and letting a huge wave break over him, and going out to the cricket club for a swim. Slowly but surely Brit falls in love with Cyrus and finds to his surprise that thoughts of Cyrus can arouse him like no fantasies involving women ever could. This results in him having what he describes as "the first atomic orgasm in history".

"Trying to Grow" not only marks Brit's battle with sexual fluidity but also mental growth when he allows himself to question whether he could be happy with a partner who did not fit into the normative idea of beautiful. Earlier he was quite certain he could not. Brit says:

"I wanted Cyrus : his mocking mouth, his quiet eyes, his thing and hair and cock. Now, if he were someone else, someone who thought life was the food you ate and the movies you saw and not the winds that blew inside your head; or someone who got out of the taxi without thanking the driver, or someone who blew his nose into his hand instead of his hanky, then I wouldn't have given a damn if he looked like Shashi Kapoor or Sean Connery or whoever; not if he had a cock that would have made him a blue movie star."

While at one point he had been certain that he couldn't desire Tina even though she was a gorgeous girl simply because she was hearing impaired, here he allows himself to question why bodily beauty mattered so much. Further, the relationship with Cyrus and the exploration of homosexual love becomes another way by which the novel challenges established notions of masculinity through the heavily satirised figure of Wagh Babu. Moreover, in a country where homosexuality is still a crime and is often couched in the language of disease with Babas and Wagh Babu claiming the ability to "Cure" people of it, a love affair between a boy with visible impairments and an able- bodies boy becomes all the more radical.

By the end of the novel, Brit is free from the contours of dependence that have defined his life. Both his parents pass away and his sister, Dolly resides abroad with her husband. He has also broken off his romantic relationship with both Amy and Cyrus. He is as he had once feared all alone, wih on one to cocoon him physically or emotionally. But the Brit at the end of the novel is a happy Brit.

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