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“There is nothing lacking in me. I have always wanted to help other disabled persons”

When we spoke to Mohammed Raees (27) he had just finished coordinating a friendly football match in Malappuram. “It was an inclusive game in which there were both disabled and non-disabled players,” said this cheerful young man from Kerala, using the expression favoured by most Malayalis to describe something smashing or fabulous: “Adi-poli!”
 
Coordinating is what Raees, who has dwarfism, does every day. For the past two years he has been project coordinator of the district administration-led disability initiative Oppam Malappuram, started by then District Collector VR Vinod and now led by the current DC, Vinay Goyal. ‘Oppam’, which means ‘together’, brings persons with different disabilities under the same umbrella. The project that kicked off the scheme, supported by the Kodur Service Cooperative Bank, involves Public Service Examination (PSC) coaching classes for Persons with Disabilities (PwD).
 
Raees enthusiastically launches into an explanation of the other Oppam projects and we have to interrupt him to ask for personal information! He lives in Parappangadi town and is the second of six children; his father owns a stationery shop and his mother is a homemaker; his older brother is a driver, a sister is married with children, and three younger siblings go to school. After studying at an un-aided school from LKG to 10th standard he did his Plus-2 at HMS Higher Secondary School and his B.Com in nearby Tirurangadi. He is pursuing M.Com via distance education from Pondicherry University.
 
We ask Raees if he was ridiculed for his short stature when he was growing up. “As a child I wasn’t aware of what people were saying but as I matured I understood their mocking comments,” he says. “However I simply ignored them and carried on with my life. I may be shorter than people around me but I have all my faculties. What is lacking in me?” What he definitely does not lack is friendship! “I have lots of friends among the boys and girls who were my classmates in Plus 2 and we regularly keep in touch,” he says. “The PSC-coaching students have also become my friends.”
 
A batch of 10 interns attends classes on Saturdays and Sundays in the three-month PSC coaching programme and with every new batch Raees gains a new set of friends. “We have had persons with blindness, deafness, intellectual disability (ID) and dwarfism,” he says. A hearing-impaired student from Thrisoor was included because there was no such programme in that district, or indeed, in any other district in the state. “We had an interpreter for her, and she was overjoyed to be able to learn,” Raees recalls. He proudly announces that four students are on the PSC job list and one person with ID has actually secured a government job as an office attender.
 
Unlike most people who run after money, Raees has always wanted to help others, particularly PwDs, he says. Therefore his job is “adi-poli” since it gives him deep satisfaction. He goes on to describe the second Oppam project – Access Café, run by wheelchair-users. Two such cafés have opened at the Malappuram collectorate and at the RTO office. “Our target is to open 50 Access Cafés,” he says. “The third project is training wheelchair-users in product marketing, four day of coaching them in how to market products made by PwDs.”
 
Although Raees has a job that keeps him on his toes, his feet do some kicking as well. He plays football as part of The Little People, which has both state and national levels teams of persons with dwarfism, under the auspices of Dharsana Club, an NGO working for the disabled. He also sings when called upon to do so at social and public functions.
 
Raees is not considering marriage at the moment. His life is already packed with meaningful work and rich friendships – in short, it’s “adi-poli”.