Exploration of Disability in Ruskin Bond's Short Story Most Beautiful

Abstract: In literature, both oral and written forms have featured representations of disabled personae. Like so called customary characters the disabled strive to make their own spheres and identities in the short fictions. But their spheres and identities are never same in the standard like that of other usual characters. Such personae are always represented as the peripheries to the normal ones. We never try to bring sufficient light on them to explore them as we do on the normal characters. Instead, we often embody them negatively as evil or sinister agent satisfying the stereotype of handicapism “twisted mind in twisted body”. This paper tries to look into how disability has been represented positively breaking the stereotype of handicapism in a short story Most Beautiful by an Indian author of British decent Ruskin Bond.