TheGrammar of My Body

ABHISHEK ANICCA is a bilingual (English and Hindi) writer, poet and spoken word artist. He identifies as a person with locomotor disability and chronic illness, which shapes his creative endeavours. He is the founder of Dislang, a digital magazine that publishes narratives by disabled people, a mentor for the South Asian Speaks Fellowship and has guest-edited for Agents of Ishq. His non-fiction work has appeared in the Times of India, DNA, Outlook, the Equator Line, the Third Eye, The Quint, Unbias the News, Devex, IndiaSpend, Agents of Ishq, In Plainspeak and Kitaab among other print and digital publications. His poetry has appeared in Nether Quarterly, Gulmohur Quarterly, Alipore Post, Rhetorica Quarterly (Lucknow), Sunflower Collective, Indian Cultural Forum, RHiME, Posham Pa, Jankipul, Samalochan, Prabhat Khabar, Apni Maati, Antrang (collection), Battling for India (anthology) and The Yearbook of English Poetry 2021 (anthology). Abhishek tweets at X and posts on Instagram @abhishekanicca.

Subverting an ableist India’s expectations from a disabled person to be ‘inspirational’ and an ‘underdog who made it’ despite their illness, Abhishek Anicca writes about everyday stories of living with disability and chronic illness in this memoir-in-essays.

With piercing mindfulness and radical vulnerability, Annica writes sparse and compelling essays on the self, questions of care and dignity, dating and navigating desire as a queer-disabled man, self-hatred, moving about with a crutch, chronic pain and shame, the chilling lack of representation in the media and reflections on nearing death.

Conversational and informal, truthful and unflinching, Anicca’s wry and urgent essays in The Grammar of My Body compel the reader to become at once distant from and proximate to their inner experiences.

'Abhishek Anicca chooses vulnerability, honesty and psychic nakedness as his weapons against the ubiquity of ableism. A searing read and an important book''Searingly honest, wholly moving, Anicca’s writing is an imperative, necessary voice in an often thoughtlessly ableist world—but beyond that of a poetic soul seeking love, lived experience, life''How can we see a person, how can we be a person, how can we live in love? Abhishek’s book is suffused with a radical and difficult political journey of self-love that imagines and insists on a deeply caring idea of equality; its prose, funny, painful, delicate, spare and as unhesitatingly truthful as poetry''Abhishek Anicca’s writing embodies radical courage. From years of processing pain in solitude, Abhishek has honed a luminous, poetic voice. His prose is minimal. Bare. Breezy. There is no time to wallow. Words get to the point like sharp darts. With its startling candour, stunning self-awareness and deep comfort with vulnerability, Abhishek’s writing is a gift to the reader. Despite the accelerating losses he endures, Abhishek has written an essential love letter. His body may betray him, his dreams may be thwarted, but there is no giving up on this difficult relationship that also sustains him. Acceptance shines through, so does endurance and ultimately, there is a reconciliation between the wounded, broken parts of the self''To read this book is to hear Abhishek Annica talking in your right ear. Bitter, hopeful, funny, self-aware, wise in the ways of the world, fed-up and romantic. Annica has a poet-and-performer’s approach to prose—intimate and intentional. When you read The Grammar of My Body, you get every shade of Annica and a whole kaleidoscope of experiences of disability and chronic illness in India. This is a book everyone needs to read'