Abhinav Shukla on Dyslexia

Abhinav Shukla is a household name in India and in Indian communities all around the globe. He’s known for his roles in the soap operas Geet – Hui Sabse Parayi, Ek Hazaaron Mein Meri Behna Hai, Chotti Bahu and Diya Aur Baati Hum - but at the moment, he’s perhaps most famous for participating in the Indian hit reality TV series Bigg Boss, a house-based elimination competition similar to the Dutch reality game show Big Brother.

He took to Instagram and Twitter on Sunday to open up to his fans about what he calls his ‘borderline dyslexia’, and how it’s taken him a long time to process and come to terms with it. In a tweet, he wrote that “I am a borderline dyslexic, it is public now! So I will divulge more… its nobody’s fault, not even mine, it is what it is! It took me 2 decades to accept this fact!”

On Instagram, Abhinav added that ‘…numbers, alphabets, words confound me, I have difficulty remembering dates, names, relation of those dates to names et al. But I am exceptional at spatial ability. Ask me to put all your extra luggage in your car’s boot, I will! I am good at a few things and bad at a few! And I am in a perpetual process of improving on things I am bad at!”

It comes as part of a trend we’re seeing emerge all over the world where big names, famous people and the faces we see all day on the screen in our pocket are becoming more open about their neurodiversities. Recently we’ve seen the Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk talk openly on Saturday Night Live about having Asperger’s Syndrome, and musicians like Noel Gallagher and Florence Welch talk candidly about the ways in which dyslexia has impacted on their careers and their lives.

It’s a new, healthier era in the history of celebrity – and it’s good for the rest of us too, because many neurodiverse young people growing up have struggled to find role models who learn and think differently like they do. Now the doors are open, and it’s much easier to find heroes who you’ve got something in common with, and it reinforces the idea that people everywhere are neurodiverse – it’s not synonymous with being alone or a loner, and it’s something that we can talk about candidly.

But opening up these conversations often isn’t always easy, and we salute Abhinav’s decision to share his dyslexia with the world. It’s a great time to be neurodiverse, and although there’s no pressure to share the ways you learn and think differently with anybody if you don’t want to, the world changes for the better when we think, design and communicate inclusively.