Surpise in India: The story of the disabled boy tied to Mumbai bus stop

When I first heard that a nine-year-old boy had been found tied to a bus stop in Mumbai, I was surprised. He can't have been, I thought. In Mumbai?

When I found out where the bus stop in question was, I was even more surprised. I pass by that area often. I'd never seen a young boy chained to a pole.

Had I passed by and just not noticed?

Like me, thousands of Mumbaikars didn't see Lakhan Kale, who suffers from cerebral palsy, on the pavement.

According to the last census conducted in 2011, around 26.8 million people are in living with disabilities in India. That's 2.2% of the population of more than 1.2 billion. Other bodies, including the World Bank, say the figure is much higher.

However, many of disabled people, like Lakhan, are allowed to quietly fade into the background in a populous country wracked by poverty where the worth and survival of many depends on their ability to work.

Let me tell you Lakhan's story.

Life on the pavement

In addition to cerebral palsy, the general term for a group of neurological conditions that affect the body's movement and coordination, Lakhan is deaf and mute. "He was fine when he was born, in fact he was a chubby baby," his paternal grandmother Sakubai recalls. She says a few months later, Lakhan developed a high fever. "One night, he shook violently," she says. "He was never the same again."

Sakubai tears up when she talks to us about her grandson. We meet her at her home -- a grimy stretch of pavement, right behind the bus stop. Desperately poor, this is where she lives. She sleeps here on a sari she spreads onto the ground. She eats here, buying food from a street vendor when she can afford to.

She is Lakhan's only caretaker. She tells us his father passed away four years ago. His mother deserted them. His older sister ran away. For a long time, it was just Sakubai and her grandson living, eating, sleeping and surviving together on the pavement.

She may be in her 70s, but Sakubai still works to earn a meager living selling small toys and trinkets on Chowpatty, a popular beachfront in the heart of Mumbai.

She says she had no choice but to tie him to a pole. "He is deaf so he would not be able to hear traffic coming. If he ran onto the road, he'd get killed," she says. "See, it's a long rope," Sakubai says, as she shows me the frayed cloth she would use to tie Lakhan's leg. I notice many of them, tied to different poles.