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

Abstract

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.