Not since the wheelchair of Stephen Hawking, has another wheelchair burst into our collective consciousness today. If Hawking could brilliantly theorize about the laws of the universe even while strapped to his wheelchair, here is a woman, who confined to a wheelchair took on the might of everything that can be considered as politically powerful in India today. If one was a prodigious physicist trying to understand the natural order, the other created her own natural order, that today has risen above every lie, every taunt, every threat, every betrayal, every vulgarity that was thrown at her.

A woman and a wheelchair. What does this signify for India? For a country that is literally gasping for breath today, the victory of Mamata Banerjee has come as the much-needed oxygen. This is all the more significant as our native cultural consciousness does not lend itself to give much credence either to a woman or a wheelchair. To say that this woman in a wheelchair

Tony Menezes, SVD