Melody

Every now and then, I am reminded of my school days - the phase when we used to meet and work and play with autistic children. This was under a work education programme conducted by our school which involved interaction with an institution for the autistic children. I remember the first day, the first sight of those who were not like us..and then the gradual process of working together to understand each other...till the moment when we actually looked forward to Thursdays to see our friends, and very special friends, in this case. If there is one thing for which I remain indebted to my school, it is this experience, which at a very young age, helped us to internalize alternative subjectivity...it taught us that expressions may vary, but the language of love is felt and shared across apparent differences; that if you cannot accommodate and cherish differences, you can never appreciate the intensity of a bond..

These children belonged to various age groups, the youngest one being around four years old. The severity of their problems varied from individual to individual, two of them being so precarious that they had to be tied to their wheelchairs, else they would fall down. One of them was Akash. We were all allotted one or two playmates with whom we were supposed to interact and initiate joint activities, such as collage making. Collage was fun beacuse as we drew the outlines, the children would tear off bits of coloured papers, dip their fingers into a large container of gum and try to fill up the outline provided. We would hold their hands and that soft touch of unadulterated human warmth and love would be transmitted magically.

Akash was a quiet little boy. With negligible spinal support and sensory integration disorder, he was always tied to a wheelchair, a handkerchief pinned to his shirt for the problem of constantly drooling. It was difficult to talk to him, for with his head bent towards a side, he would never be able to respond; neither could he partcipate in our joint activities. I would take him to the site of collage-making and he would watch-and-not-watch silently from his wheelchair. When I spoke to him of the beautiful sky or the scorching heat, he would not stir. After a few such meetings, one day on my trip out in the school field with Akash, as I took him around constantly talking about everything I could think of, something happened. I saw Akash's finger tapping on the handle of the wheelchair to which it was tied. For a moment, I felt I was simply imagining things, and continued with the walk. But then it happened again. I stopped and opened the soft knot around his arms. It was still tapping. I rose alarmed and just as I did so, something even stranger happened. I bent closer to him to confirm my perception..and there it was...he was humming a tune, very very softly. A strange sensation ran through my body. Fearing any sort of deterioration in his health, I took him back to the room where our teachers were, as quickly as possible, for in these children there is a strange capacity to fathom our minds - they can sense our tension, our not-being-alright, almost instantaneously, without a single word uttered. So, taking Akash back to the room had to be as 'normal' as possible, no matter what the circumstances were. As we reached the room, I wiped his mouth, went to his teacher and told her what had happened. She said she would come back in a while to check and asked me to continue playing with him. As we continued, the teacher came silently from behind and observed Akash. She then bent her head to confirm what I had said. She heard it. Akash was humming a very familiar tune of an old Hindi number, very very softly. The teacher hugged him, tears in her eyes and said "my Akash is happy".

More than a decade has passed. Akash still remains my refuge in moments of solitude, and his song my melody through the cacophony of an otherwise absurd jouney called Life... I do not know what became of him, but as I perceive my self today, I can feel him and his melody reverberating through my being...