The way a people perceive a concept such as hope is the product of several complex factors in its cultural cogito, a product of a philosophy of life that has been, in an ancient culture such as India's, shaped over millennia. The Hindu mind, which has apprehended the world since Vedic times as a weary place and human existence as a millstone around its neck, is destined to eternally harbour a philosophy of life that is shaped by the ancient and indeterminate web of myth, beliefs and history. This is the philosophy of karma that looks at an individual's life as the predetermined effect of her/his past actions in an earlier life. The moral law of karma is immutable and prevails through its essential corollary - the samsara or eternal course of births, deaths and rebirths. Given this framework of the Hindu mind, the rationale offered for any life at the margins is the pre-ordained scheme of things- the vortex of one's fate, and hence, hopeless. This chapter observes how such a view prevails about people with disabilities in India, and explores the double bind faced by Indian women with disabilities in such a world order (given that they are simultaneously subject to disability and gender oppression), how society perceives them, and how most resign themselves to fate following the philosophy of karma. Paradoxically, the same concept even as it appears irrational and exploitative in maintaining a status quo, enables the women, their families and the community at large to find some kind of meaning. The chapter, further, wrests from within Indian philosophy, the feminine principle of Shakti and speculates whether this principle may be harnessed to find answers to questions the Hindu mind is grappling with, and in so doing empower the women themselves. Such an empowerment is my understanding of hope-a ray of light in the darkness.