Beyond the Bougainvillea: Reflections on Disability and Rehabilitation

What does it mean to be disabled? What gives people the courage to live with long-term disability or incapacity? Can any of us claim to be fully ‘abled’? And what is it that hurts most about being disabled? Is it the physical difficulties, or is it the isolation and stigma that often accompany them?

These are real questions. In search of answers, Beyond the Bougainvillea takes readers through the curtain of flowers that covers the front of the Rehabilitation Institute of the Christian Medical College, Vellore, in South India. There they are introduced to a community of patients and staff, therapists, researchers and relatives whose lives have been changed by the experience of disability and the challenges of rehabilitation.

This encounter is not for the faint-hearted. The experience of disability speaks to everyone seeking answers to the big questions that face all of us in the end: such as, what does it mean to be human? And how can we best accompany one another on the journey of life?