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After the accident which left her spinal cord severely injured, Dr. Sruti Mohapatra took to books. She was in a hurry to understand what had happened to her. Her first book was ‘Joni’ by Joni Eareckson. Joni Eareckson had broken her neck in a diving accident and was paralyzed. After months in hospital and rehabilitation centers, Joni learned to live with the fact that she could never lead a normal life again. For every act of daily living, she needed support. With the support of her family and her friends, Joni learned to live an active life and accepted the help with dignity. She also read ‘Take my Hands’ by Dr. Mary Verghese, the doctor in a wheelchair. After that, her next reading was about Stephen Hawking. Each of these stories infused her with the hope to start a new life, at a slower pace and often with assistance, back home in Odisha.
However, homecoming proved to be painful and perplexing. Shunned by society and humiliated at every step, she had become shy and soon she weaved a cocoon around her. She would interact just with her family, no one else was allowed in her cocoon. It was the Himalayan support of her parents and the love of her family which slowly gave her the strength to regain her confidence and look at life with a leonine zeal.
Her endeavor after that was a story of several pages, be it her going back to the University, earning a Ph.D., facing nth rejections while job hunting, or starting a study circle. The long and short of the stories is that perseverance and hard work are the only two keys to reaching goals successfully. In 1989, Dr. Mohapatra had started volunteering. Her sister, who got married the same year and left for the USA, sent her books and journals which fuelled her hunger for an independent and dignified living. Every page she turned gave her new dreams of living with her rights respected and protected. She corresponded with many of the addresses and telephone numbers in the magazines learning more with every turning page.
Dr. Mohapatra volunteered with the Odisha State Red Cross and visited Shanta Memorial Rehabilitation Centre. In 1995, she joined the disability movement in India with the protest for the passage of the Disability Act in the Parliament. In 1996, with the formation of the National Disability Network (NDN), India’s chapter of DPI, she traveled extensively around the world and visited many schools, attended many conferences, spoke in many meetings, and enriched herself on the issue of disability.
