By Suvir Saran
New Delhi [India], December 3 : It has been a few weeks since the India Inclusion Summit ended--weeks in which the noise of daily life returned, but the silence inside me deepened. Weeks in which the world slipped back into familiar rhythms, but my own rhythm felt rearranged. In these weeks, I have sat with my sorrow, sifted through my shock, and watched my emotions settle like sediment in still water. And only now--after distance and deliberation--have I understood the gravitas of what those days in Bangalore revealed.
Because the people I met there live lives that are vast, vulnerable, valiant, and victorious--lives so large, so luminous, so layered with bravery that they embarrass our brittle fragilities. They endure challenges we do not even have the vocabulary to name, and yet they wake with courage, walk with conviction, work with commitment, and smile with a strength that feels sacred.
Meanwhile, we--who collapse at the hint of heartbreak, who crumble at the smallest slight, who spiral at a sprain--call them brave. We are broken by inconveniences. They are buoyed by impossibilities. We drown in details. They rise through storms.
And today--as India marks World Disability Day, and as the President of India confers the National Awards this very morning upon four extraordinary members of the India Inclusion Foundation--I understand with crystalline clarity:
The people we pity are often the people we should be learning from.
The people we overlook are often the people illuminating our future.
I walked into the India Inclusion Summit 2025 thinking I understood empathy. I walked out knowing I had been living half-blind.
It was the thirteenth year of this gathering--thirteen years of ferocity and faith, thirteen years of families who refuse to let the world diminish their children. And though the Summit lasted only a weekend, it has lived in me ever since, tugging at my thoughts, unsettling my certainties, deepening my understanding of dignity.
Before I went onstage, I asked myself:
"Why am I here? What claim do I have in this cathedral of courage?"
I felt small.
I felt unsure.
I felt unworthy.
And then Ferose VR--the father, the poet, the quiet philosopher-general of the movement--looked at me with a gaze that was soft, steady, and startlingly wise. He wasn't inviting me as a chef or columnist. He was inviting me as someone who has been othered my whole life--not for disability, but for who I dared to love.
It struck me then:
Othering is universal.
It only changes costumes.
Some are othered for their bodies.
Some for their loves.
Some for their genders.
Some for their faith.
Some simply for existing.
Our differences may differ, but our wounds rhyme.
The Summit began with a message from former Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, recorded at one in the morning--a father speaking of his two daughters who live with disability. A man whose public power pales before his private tenderness. He said:
"This is not about charity.
This is about the Constitution."
Martin Luther King Jr.'s truth echoed across continents and decades:
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
And suddenly, Chandrachud's conviction became a call to conscience.
Then came Prateek Khandelwal--the ramp-builder, the barrier-breaker, the entrepreneur who turns every obstacle into an opportunity. He rolled onto the stage with a grin that belonged in cinema and a mind that belonged in mathematics.
"I'm a banya," he laughed,
"I've taken my disability and made money off it. Don't admire me. Talk to me."
Talk to him about heartbreak.
About cricket.
About deadlines and dal-chawal.
But don't drown him in pity.
And I shrank inside--remembering my own eighteen months of legal blindness, when I could see only three feet from one eye and had quietly given up on living. I retreated. He rose.
He didn't need a miracle.
He became one.
Then strode in Tinkesh Kaushik--missing three limbs, missing nothing of life.
A man who has scuba-dived, sky-jumped, and climbed toward Mount Everest--as far as the mountain allowed a body missing three limbs to go.
He climbed not for applause,
but for aliveness.
Helen Keller whispered across history:
"The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision."
And suddenly, I knew:
I had lived with sight, but without vision.
The lights softened as Gayatri Gupta entered with her mother, Shalini Gupta--a duo stitched together by devotion and defiance. Gayatri's art has glided through Christie's, bloomed across airports, and lives in private collections far beyond Bangalore. Her canvases do not whisper. They command.
Her lines do not apologise.
Her colours do not plead.
Her art does not ask for space.
It claims it.
And today--right now, on this very World Disability Day--Gayatri Gupta receives the National Award from the President of India.
Her mother's pride must be glowing across galaxies.
Her triumph is a truth we needed:
Talent has no disability.
Society often does.
And then came the quiet revolution of MITTI Cafe, founded by the fierce Alina Alam, run entirely by adults with disabilities. A workplace where dignity is the default, ability is assumed, inclusion is infrastructural.
MITTI Cafe does not sell food.
It serves self-worth.
It plates possibility.
It seasons societal shift.
If India needs a recipe for equality, it is written there.
These stories have lived in me for weeks--echoes turning into lessons, murmurs becoming mantras.
But today--on World Disability Day, live and unfolding--the meaning feels even more monumental.
PAVITHRA YS
Managing Trustee of the India Inclusion Foundation and MD of Vindhya-e-Infomedia. A woman who built one of India's largest impact enterprises, employing thousands with disabilities.
A leader whose life is a love letter to inclusion.
RICHA BANSAL
Founder of Saarathee, an Inclusion Fellow rewriting the future of equitable employment in India.
A warrior of workplace dignity.
GAYATRI GUPTA
Art for Inclusion Fellow, visionary painter, daughter of Shalini Gupta--receiving her National Award today.
Her art is not a protest. It is a portal.
DHRIT RANKA
The luminous host of last year's Summit, a woman whose voice carries both truth and tenderness.
Her mother, Shweta Runwal, an Inclusion Fellow, has been a steward of stories and a strategist of change.
Together, they embody intergenerational courage.
These women are not "special."
They are spectacular.
They are not "inspirations."
They are ignitions.
Their awards are not consolation.
They are coronations.
Weeks later, I finally understand:
I had lived with temporary blindness.
But I had lived permanently blind to others.
We--the able-bodied--are often the ones disabled by denial.
We other.
We orbit.
We observe.
But rarely do we enter.
Rarely do we engage.
Rarely do we embrace.
The real disability is not theirs.
It is our distance.
Our correctness without connection.
Our politeness without presence.
Our charity without courage.
And then came the revelation that broke me open:
What I witnessed in Bangalore could easily have electrified New York.
If this exact summit had taken place in Manhattan,
the world would have worshipped it as a masterpiece of moral imagination.
But this wasn't New York.
This was India.
This was Bangalore.
This was us.
Ferose didn't build a conference.
He built a communion.
A cathedral of courage.
A chorus of dignity.
Tagore's prayer rose like smoke:
"Into that heaven of freedom, let my country awake."
In that hall, India felt awake.
So today--World Disability Day, right now, as the nation watches--I offer this:
Don't call someone "special."
Call them by their name.
Talk to them.
Eat with them.
Laugh with them.
Learn from them.
Work with them.
Walk with them.
Because they do not need our sympathy.
They deserve our solidarity.
They do not need charity.
They deserve constitutional rights.
They do not need kindness.
They deserve equality, empathy, engagement, and everyday companionship.
For the only disability this country cannot survive
is our refusal to see one another as immensely, imperfectly, incandescently human.
And if the India Inclusion Summit--thirteen years young and thirteen layers deep--has taught us anything, it is this:
Inclusion is not kindness.
Inclusion is courage.
Inclusion is clarity.
Inclusion is connection.
Inclusion is citizenship.
Inclusion is love made visible.
And above all:
The people we pity are often the people we should emulate.
The people we overlook are the people who will lead us forward. (ANI/Suvir Saran).
Disclaimer: Suvir Saran is a Masterchef, Author, Hospitality Consultant And Educator. The views expressed in this article are his own.