VIJAYAWADA: “My father used to take me on his shoulders to school,” recalls Chalamalasetty Nikhila, a blogger, who released her first book ‘The Day I Started Flying’ here on Sunday. The debutant’s work has caught the attention of writers for her writing skills and the message she tries to convey through her book.
Speaking to Express, Nikhila said, “I wanted to make people understand how to treat a differently abled person since they are treated inappropriately most of the time. Their forced sympathy and thoughtless questioning sometimes is very demotivating.”
Nikhila, who comes from a commerce background, is a professional blogger (www.nikkistalk.co.in) who writes about general topics like beauty tips and food. She said her parents never overwhelmed her with sympathy and treated her normally. “They never even wanted to acknowledge that I needed a wheelchair. In fact, my father carried me to school on his shoulders. They treated me normally - the way I ought to have been treated.”
Nikhila gave up her idea of pursuing ICW a year ago and chose to continue blogging out of which she started making a living. “As I started blogging since last year, I have established contacts with people who are like me (differently abled) and others who work for the betterment of people like us. The blog’s readership grew and I started earning. Wedding websites and other sites approached me and I monetized my posts to be featured on their pages,” she said proudly.
Nikhila has even begun investing in mutual funds. She seems to have grown money-wise after getting a pittance as salary at an ‘educational institution’ where she worked before her online fame. When noted scriptwriter for Discovery and western TV shows, Nikhil Chandwani, approached her after reading her blog and suggested that she jot down her experiences as a book, she went ahead and the result is her first book ‘The Day I Started Flying’.
“When Nikhil approached me for starting a workshop called Writer’s Rescue Centre in Hyderabad, he told me that I should consider writing a book and so I did,” she said.
She had completed the manuscript within three weeks. “It’s like a personal diary. By reading this book, I want people to experience what I experienced and understand what I went through. That way, they’ll know how to behave with a differently abled person.”
She recalled how people accosted her and asked what she did for a living - indirectly referring to her wheelchair-bound state. “They must learn how to strike a normal conversation instead of trying to show phony sympathy,” she said.
Padmasree Turlapati Kutumba Rao, para-athlete Baljeet Kaur, AP Editor’s Association President Krishnam Raju, and author GV Purnachand attended the function where ‘The Day I Started Flying’s’ was released.