Early in the first episode of Amazon Prime Video’s new series, Ziddi Girls, Devika, a first-year student or ‘fachha‘ at the fictitious college Matilda House calls up a friend and starts complaining about her classmate Wallika Bisht, who has a disability. As soon as she starts saying, “On top of that, she’s my roommate, dude”, I start dreading an ableist attack.
Instead, she rants about how the rock music-loving poet, Wallika, doesn’t allow Devika to sleep as she either listens to loud music or keeps the lights on to write down the rhyme in her head. Of course, Devika adds that she cannot complain about her to anyone as Wallika’s chair has wheels, the permanent types. She happens to be in a wheelchair. There is no ableism here. And there isn’t any sympathy either. It is just one eighteen-year-old complaining to her friend about another classmate—who happens to be in a wheelchair.
Wallika is a refreshing change from the two broad cliches the portrayal of disability in India’s visual media falls into. The first is ‘inspiration porn’ as seen in movies like Iqbal (2005), where a deaf boy played by Shreyas Talpade goes on to become a fast bowler for the Indian cricket team. Or Kaabil (2017), where a blind Hrithik Roshan takes on local goons, politicians and the Mumbai Police to avenge his wife. Second, are the coming-of-age stories like Black (2005), where Rani Mukerji plays a blind and deaf woman who is tutored in often violent methods by her teacher, played by Amitabh Bachchan. The movie ends with the tutor becoming the patient, having developed Alzheimer’s disease, with Rani Mukherji’s character looking after him.
But the category I have a genuine problem is one where the disability itself is made fun of with slapstick humour. The most recent example was Aankh Micholi (2023), where someone with Alzheimer’s was called “Blulakkad baap” (forgetful father), and a person who stammers was called “atki hui cassette” (stuck cassette), and night blindness was misrepresented. The crux of the movie was that if a person with a disability wants to get married, the only way to do so would be to hide their disability.
In my opinion, such slapstick humour is dangerous in a country like India that anyway reinforces such stereotypes around disability. The disabled are considered individuals to be pitied, plagued with a medical condition. A case in point is the 2011 Census, where self-declarations led to only 2.21 per cent of India being considered Persons with Disabilities.
Toward the end of 2023, I decided to challenge the portrayal of PwDs in the movie in the Delhi High Court. Unfortunately, my case was dismissed. My lawyers, Jai Anant Dehadrai and Senior Advocate Sanjoy Ghose, decided to follow a different path when we went to the Supreme Court in 2024. For the first time, a movie trailer was shown in open court, and there was a mixed reaction of gasps, snickering, and laughter. My lawyers asked me to address the CJI too. I distinguished between comedy based on situations PwDs face because of their disability, which is acceptable humour and jokes about the disability. The Supreme Court would end up passing a historic judgment making a distinction between ‘disability humour’ that was deemed acceptable and ‘disabling humour’ that was not. For the first time in India, the SC created guidelines on the portrayal of disability.
Also read: BJP made big promises in Delhi on disability rights. Now comes the real test
What Ziddi Girls gets right
I feel Ziddi Girls aced in understanding this distinction, with Wallika being no saintly woman. The defining moment in the show comes, for me, when she learns that her classmate Tabby wants to attend the Bir music festival. With a roll of her eyes, Wallika asks, “You like rock music?” Of course, she has a stereotype in her head about a small-town UP girl, who is a wannabe Instagram influencer.
The show doesn’t make her a superwoman, either. It brings out the challenges of being a party-going wheelchair user. As the girls are dancing to the beats of music at a house party, Wallika suddenly blurts, “Girls, su-su coming.” After glancing at each other, her friends quickly realise the emergency and look for an accessible washroom where Wallika can release the pressure.
In a country where Persons with Disabilities are often considered asexual, we even see a budding romance between Wallika and JJ, a lead singer of a band.
Early in the show, Wallika asks her father to call her at 8 pm every day. She gets agitated on occasions when this daily conversation doesn’t happen. This is not because Wallika is scared and needs a guardian. Quite the opposite, it is because her father is an environmental activist with a risk to his life. She wants to make sure he’s safe.
These scenes reminded me of the real stories of people around me. Like my lawyer friend, Amar Jain, who has been using his legal education to ensure his father can identify medical negligence and get the best treatment. Amar happens to be blind.
They also remind me of my colleague at EnAble India, Sayomdeb Mukherjee, who once called for an ambulance for his mother. The emergency response team quickly assumed he was the patient, inserted him into the ambulance and started driving off even as he shouted to stop it.
Last year, my mother was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer. I decided to lead the coordination with doctors, manage appointments, and ensure complete insurance documentation. I remember the look of bewilderment on the insurance coordinator’s face when I signed off the documentation as the breadwinner of the family. It was almost as if it was the first time he witnessed a financially independent wheelchair user!
Ziddi Girls is not a show about disability. It is a coming-of-age show. The audience isn’t even told why Wallika is in a wheelchair. It’s perfect, because, surprise, surprise, we, the disabled, don’t spend the whole day thinking about our disability. We contain multitudes, with disability being just a part of our identity. Thank you, Shonali Bose, for showing the way forward and how disability should be portrayed in visual media.
Nipun Malhotra is a disability rights activist. He can be followed on X at @nipunmalhotra and on LinkedIn here.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)
As if Ms. Ratan Priya, Ms. Tina Das and Ms. Tamanna Arora were not enough, now we have to deal with Mr. Nipun Malhotra too.
Is this journalism? Or is this some kind of joke on us?
Are we supposed to subscribe to The Print for this?