Humans on Wheels: When Tricycles Are the Ticket to Freedom

These humans have found a new lease of life through wheels.

Just look at wheels carefully once; note their movement — circular rings each revolving with clockwork precision and together moving in a fiery synchronisation. Thousands of years later, these black-and-silver rubber hoops continue to give a mechanical impetus to the ambitions of man.

For 18-year-old Mohit, they mean much more than a mode of transport . They mean mobility. They mean dignity. And they mean independence.

Diagnosed with cerebral palsy, Mohit could only walk short distances earlier. Today, he has gotten his first tricycle, and his smile is so warm it can light up a hundred hearts.

Among those present, the happiest are disability rights activist Nipun Malhotra, co- founder and CEO, Nipman Foundation, and his mother Priyanka Malhotra, Managing Trustee of the foundation.

Their initiative, Wheels For Life, connects donors to the disabled who are in need of tricycles. “Only one who suffers knows,” says Priyanka, whose older son Nipun was born with arthrogryposis, a rare congenital disorder and uses a wheelchair.

Meanwhile, all eyes at JJ Colony, a lower middle class neighbourhood in Madanpur Khadar, are on Mohit.

His mother tells me her son is very sharp and comes with roaring ambition. Out of the things he wants, one is to buy a big car for his mother, and another, is getting her a full-time domestic help.

“I want to give you a lot, Mummy; I want to get you a maid. I don’t like you working day and night in the kitchen,” he often says to his mother.

37-year-old Seema has had polio since 3. In the village where she lived, there were no facilities or government help. But after she came to Delhi, she started getting a pension. A tricycle is what she had been waiting for so long.

“Now that I have started getting heavier, using a stick becomes uncomfortable. If I have to go anywhere, I take the help of my kids. If I walk some distance, my legs begin to hurt,” she says.

Even though Seema studied till Class XII, she could not get any job because of her condition. She says she wanted to work like me and other girls like me. She now works as a maid while her husband is a daily wage labourer.

Of the some 70 million persons with disabilities in India, only about 100,000 have succeeded in obtaining employment in industry. “For people like us, life is a compulsion,” says Seema.

The most basic tricyles cost about Rs 7,000, while wheelchairs are slightly cheaper. But people in JJ Colony prefer to get tricycles as they give them increased mobility. Many of them do not have the luxury of a full-time help, so they believe a tricycle gives them greater autonomy.

“It feels great to be on these wheels”, says Mohd Shah Shahah, who is escorted by his little daughter aged six.

“Universities are still not accessible to the physically challenged,” says Ravi Kumar, who did his BA from Delhi University. He travelled by bus during college and says the new low-floor DTC buses have made commuting easier for him.

“For 25 years, I had been riding my old tricycle, it’s seat had begun to get bad and it used to hurt,” says Satpal Singh, as his youngest daughter looks on.

Khushi, 7, looked fine till she was two-three months old. While the other kids her age used to smile and show some movement, she would be absolutely still.

“We felt something was weird, so we took her to a hospital in Rajasthan,” says her mother Mamta. She is being treated since then and yet there’s no relief. While she was growing in her mother’s foetus, the doctors at the village hospital later told her, she suffered from a lack of oxygen. She is being currently treated at AIIMS.

Meanwhile, there are many, many more left stranded without wheels.