Fragility as metaphor: disability, difference and postcoloniality in Firdaus Kanga’s Trying to Grow

ABSTRACT

Physical or cognitive disability of a person is the embodied form of disablement, whereas disability can be seen as metaphoric of disqualification from being ‘normal'. As the mother of the disabled protagonist in Firdaus Kanga's autobiographical debut novel Trying to Grow (1990) tells him, ‘It's the heights you reach that count, not the height you are', the issue of physical normalcy appears to be challenged. In this novel, Daryus Kotwal, alias Brit, is the poster-boy of physical disability with ‘osteogenesis imperfecta', a disease which makes the bones brittle. This article attempts to investigate how the physical disability experienced by Brit and the fragility of his bones, could be seen as material dimension of impairment and metaphorically equated with the postcolonial nation's societal differences and supposed fragility. This article also draws attention to Brit's Anglicized Parsee identity emphasizing the minority status of the ‘different' in the Indian context and focussing on the multi-layered metaphorical ties between disability, difference and postcoloniality as well as between oppression and the possibilities of resistance. This essay finally points out that disability is not a kind of ‘medicalized' identity, but the identity of someone who is normally ‘able’ to face psycho-physical and attitudinal barriers.

KEYWORDS:

• Disability
• difference
• marginal
• other
• postcolonial

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Asis De

Dr. Asis De is an associate professor and head of the department of English (UG & PG) and director of research (humanities and social sciences) at Mahishadal Raj College. He also acts as the Secretary of the Faculty Council of Postgraduate Studies (Addl. Charge) at Mahatma Gandhi University, West Bengal, India. In a number of publications and conference presentations in Asia (India, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka), the United States and Brazil, in Europe (Belgium, Germany, England, France, Scotland, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Austria and the Netherlands) and in Africa (Egypt and South Africa), he has worked on issues of ecological humanities, dislocation and transnationalism, cultural identity and kinship studies in Global Anglophone literatures. He has completed one Minor Research Project of UGC (2017) and another Minor Research Project of ICSSR on the prison narratives of the cellular jail in 2019. In 2021, he completed a Major Research Project on family sociology and kinship in Indian diasporic literature under the IMPRESS Scheme of the Ministry of Education (Govt. of India). He is a life member of IACLALS and a regular member of EACLALS, SLACLALS, GAPS, SIEF and MESEA. His recent publications include – Amitav Ghosh's Culture Chromosome, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022, and ‘Refugees to Worker-Migrants: Transformations of Cross-Border Migration in Amitav Ghosh's Novels’ (DOI: 10.4324/9781003131458-11) in Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives, New York: Routledge, 2023.