KARACHI: To mark the International Day for People with Disabilities an event on Tuesday was organised at the Rangoonwala Auditorium under the auspices of Dar ul Sukun. The main feature of the programme was a series of short plays titled Ghaafil — Consciously Overlooked performed by Awam Company.

Prior to that, a video about Dar ul Sukun was shown on the invaluable work that they do with special children. One of the moving scenes from the video was a polio-stricken young man in a wheelchair hailing an auto-rickshaw and successfully getting into it.

Then the plays were performed. The mimes highlighted the plight of children who suffer because of the callous attitude of society towards them. For example, in the first mime a man and a woman are shown in a romantic relationship. They get married after which the woman gives birth to a baby girl. When the girl grows up a bit, an accident takes the life of her father. Soon, another man comes into her mother’s life and he starts ill-treating the girl. One day he hurts her so bad that she sustains injuries and is admitted to a hospital. When in the wheelchair in a disabled state, she remembers her father, who consoles her in her imagination. It was a touchy sequence and there would hardly be a person in the hall who did not feel its poignancy. On the whole, it was a nicely put up performance that managed to create the effect that it was aiming for.

Distinguished social activist and theatre artist Sheema Kermani was the keynote speaker on the occasion. She said the scenes [from the play] had brought tears to her eyes. She thanked and appreciated the role Dar ul Sukun was playing in society. She lamented that we had created a society in which we did not want to give love to those who needed it.

Ms Kermani lauded individuals such as Dr Ruth Pfau and those associated with Dar ul Sukun for working with people that some of us did not even like to look at. “What kind of people are we?” she raised the question, “who don’t want to love people who need it most?” She praised the artists who had put up the play for conceiving a sensitive idea. She also complained that the media in our country did not highlight such issues. Instead what they created [on TV] was a fantasy world.

Here one must mention the fine and eloquent way in which Ms Cookie Lewis of Dar ul Sukun hosted the event.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2017