Living with, through and beyond pain

Moderated by Uma Damodar Sridhar the panel on ‘Writing Against Odds’ featured the brilliant books by Amin Sheik and Chandan Das. Two extraordinary lives that survived and flourished in the face of insurmountable adversity.

Amin Sheikh took shape on the streets of Mumbai as a street urchin. As a child he worked in a tea stall. When he tripped and broke all the tea glasses he ran away from home fearful of the consequences.

He lived on the railway platforms begging, stealing, running and ate discards. His tale is one that is bound to bring anyone to tears. But he doesn’t want them.

As he sat on stage, in his broken English he poured out raw emotion that though unpolished shook every member of the audience to their core.

He is a man of conviction, of passion and determination. He is driven to make a change or rather be the change.

He recounts his hardships and years of abuse at the hands of people he would rather refer to as animals in his book “Life is life: I am because of You.”

The profits from his book sales go towards running a Library café in Andheri, Mumbai which he runs with the help of seven other street urchins. He is a proud self-made man with dreams and the grit to make them real.

Chandan Das suffers from Thalassaemia, a genetic disorder that inhibits creation of hemoglobin from birth. He is a cancer patient who is not new to pain and mortality of life.

His book “The Road Taken” is his life’s tale and he recounts his struggle with Thalassaemia and how it affected him. His writing flows and ebbs like the most scenic river, with might and grace unparalleled by other.

His inner musings as he grapples with his ailing body are riveting. His mastery with word and metaphor express the levels of pain despite which one can thrive, far beyond what one may imagine.

The panel couldn’t better be summarised than in the words of Amin, “If I can you can”.