Vinta Nanda discovers Barnali Ray Shukla's humane documentary I Run Into Chairs, an intimate portrait of Divyanshu Ganatra's fearless life that dismantles disability stereotypes through adventure, empathy, poetry and radical joy, redefining what seeing.

There are filmmakers whose work you admire, and then there are artists whose lives become as compelling as their creations. The deeper you dig, the more you discover about Barnali Ray Shukla—and I caught myself telling her recently that her journey fascinates me enough to follow it from here on.

She is constantly creating. One day it is a poem, the next lyrics for her debut song. She writes scripts for mainstream producers and directors while simultaneously writing and directing her own films, documentaries and music videos. There is an unmistakable restlessness about her creative spirit, one that refuses to remain within a single form.

It was through one of our conversations that I collided with a gem of a documentary: I Run Into Chairs.

I watched it, sat with its emotional aftertaste, and immediately called Barnali. What struck me as much as the film itself was the excitement in her voice. She spoke about it with the enthusiasm of someone who had finished making it yesterday. Her understanding of its protagonist, Divyanshu Ganatra, is so nuanced that his triumphs seem to have become part of her own emotional landscape.

A Chance Encounter Changed Everything

Barnali never intended to make this film. She was researching a documentary on paragliding when cinematographer Pinaki Sarkar casually suggested she read about a man named Divyanshu Ganatra. That single recommendation altered the direction of her work—and perhaps something within her as well.

“I read everything I could find about Divyanshu… We met over chai, and I came away struck by something: sometimes, he seemed to see more than the sighted. This needed to be told.”

Before the documentary took shape, a poem emerged. Barnali submitted it to Platypus Press in the UK for the anthology A Portrait in Blues, where it became one of her earliest published poems. The poem travelled across the world before the film did, quietly announcing the arrival of a story that refused to remain confined to the page.

Eventually she realised the obvious truth: Divyanshu did not belong inside another documentary. He deserved one entirely his own.

Seeing Beyond Sight

I Run Into Chairs introduces us to one of India's most extraordinary adventurers.

After losing his eyesight to glaucoma at the age of nineteen, Divyanshu Ganatra was repeatedly told that his life was effectively over. Well-meaning counsellors suggested he stay home and make cane furniture. Society had already decided the boundaries of his future. He refused to accept them.

He became the first blind Indian to fly solo, fulfilling the childhood dream of becoming a pilot. He became the first blind tandem cyclist to ride from Manali to Khardung La, one of the world's most demanding cycling routes. In 2018, he became the first blind Indian to summit Mount Kilimanjaro.

Yet the documentary's greatest achievement is that it never treats these accomplishments as spectacle. Instead, it asks a profoundly human question: What changes when a man who woke up blind at nineteen reaches forty-three and says he no longer needs his eyesight back?

The answer is neither sentimental nor heroic. It is liberating.

Refusing Inspiration Porn

Barnali is remarkably clear about what she wanted to avoid. Her film does not place disability on a pedestal, nor does it manufacture easy inspiration. In her director's statement, she writes that her intention is to sensitize the sighted—not to glorify disability—but to encourage all of us to become enablers rather than spectators. That distinction is vital.

Divyanshu's humour, self-awareness and irreverence make him impossible to reduce to a symbol. He is adventurous, flawed, mischievous and utterly alive. The documentary celebrates identity without imprisoning its subject inside it. As Barnali says, this is “another attempt to get his particular brand of madness out into the world—the kind that breaks barriers, embraces adventure and refuses to take the obvious route.”

The Filmmaker Who Keeps Climbing

Barnali Ray Shukla's own journey is no less unconventional. A Delhi University topper in plant tissue culture and cell biology, she walked away from science to pursue cinema. She assisted Ram Gopal Varma on Satya, worked in writers' rooms with Ektaa Kapoor, wrote and directed the feature film Kucch Luv Jaisaa, and has twice been shortlisted for the Sundance–Mahindra Script Lab.

Her documentaries have travelled widely: Liquid Borders won the Enlightenment Award in the United States after premiering across India, Europe and America; Once Upon A Sky collected awards across Europe and Asia; and All Is Well has earned recognition on three continents with more than twenty awards.

Perhaps it is no surprise that when she is not writing or filming, she disappears into the Himalayas.

A Film That Stays With You

I Run Into Chairs is more than a portrait of an exceptional individual. It is a quiet argument against the limits we casually place on one another. It reminds us that disability is often created less by bodies than by attitudes, less by blindness than by the inability to imagine possibility.

I Run Into Chairs is streaming on ShortsTV (Amazon), Airtel Xstream, OTTplay and Binge.

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