...it's only words

10 years old Ishu is impatiently pacing up and down the sitting room of his house with long wobbly steps, a half smile on his face. He cannot balance very well and excitement is making him even more nervous, causing him to run into pieces of furniture. He runs his hand over his face, feels the sharp edge of his teeth and laughs to himself. No one knows what he is thinking. Except, to an extent, his mom. “He can’t wait to get to school. He loves being with other children,” says homemaker Ritu Negi, 35, Ishan’s delicately built smiling mom. She’s right. The moment the school bus comes around the corner and stops at the gate, Ishu’s eyes sparkle. Pushing the door open, he eagerly makes his way to the mini bus that will take him to Tapovan Government School for Special Children, Ganganagar.
 
Ishu is special. And not just because he shares his name with Isa Maseeh or Jesus Christ (he was born on Christmas Eve in a hospital run by the Missionaries). Not even because he is one of India’s 3 per cent children who are born mentally/ physically challenged (government statistics don't even bother to distinguish between the two). Ishu is special because he does not feel malice, he does not judge people from the way they look or behave and he does not bear a grudge against those who look the other way because they are not willing to accept him the way he is. There are very few others like him in this world and we the not-so-special need to respect that, even if we cannot emulate it.
 
Though physically Ishu is 10, he suffers from MR (mental retardation) and autism that brings his mental age down to a year and half. He cannot feed himself, clean himself, express his feelings, read a book or even understand a bedtime story – normal stuff that most other kids his age do. Yet, in many ways he is just like any other child because he loves Maggi, enjoys spicy chicken curry, likes having guests over, misses his grandparents when they are away and likes to fiddle with the television switch, giggling at the screen light going on and off at his little act of naughtiness. He has not learnt to say Mummy yet but his dad is a happy man because only recently Ishu called out to him and said “Papa”.
 
“That’s the first word he has started saying and he understands it means father,” says a very proud Ritu, who generously takes time out of her busy schedule to open a window into the life of a special child for us. According to statistics released by CRY (Child Relief and You) 3 % of India's children are mentally/physically challenged. As many as 20 out of every 1000 rural children are mentally/physically challenged, compared to 16 out of every 1000 urban children. Out of this staggeringly large number only one lakh children are getting special education. Teachers at Tapovan, the school Ishu goes to, make him do speech exercises, hand coordination, physiotherapy, get him to practice sitting in one place since he is hyperactive and help him to colour using crayons.  
 
Why we need integrated education
 Avenues for integrated learning – schools where special kids interact with other normal kids their age – are limited and Ritu points out that often parents of normal children don’t want their children mixing up with those suffering from MR or autism. Sometime back when she had put Ishu in integrated hobby classes at Dehradun’s Latika Vihar, many of the other parents objected to having their children interact with special kids. “They feared it was something contagious which their kids would catch,” says Ritu. Very unfortunate, not just for special children but society as well. Special kids need to be with normal kids because they learn better and pick up faster by example. And normal kids need to be with special kids because integrated education sensitises and educates them about special needs and helps in making them more humane members of society. This is the only solution to a world that cruelly alienates special children and their parents because it cannot be bothered to understand them.
 
They need acceptance
When her neighbour Pinky hugs Ishu or takes him to her own house, it makes Ritu feel accepted as a friend and as a mother whose child is different from other children. It also gives her time to finish her  chores or just read a long pending book. “Life becomes so much easier for parents of special children if they find acceptance from their families and friends. Otherwise, they end up getting isolated since they cannot participate in social functions like visits to the temple, marriages, parties etc. They have to be babysitters all the time,” says Meera Ramchander, principal of Asha School for Special Children, Bangalore, also a specialist in child development and psychology. If families and friends pitch in and help by taking care of the children for a few hours so that the parents can go for a movie, or shop or even have dinner together, it makes a big difference to the quality of their life. 
 
More about special children
Even though we don't understand them, just the way they don't understand us, special children accept us more easily than we accept them. Ishu and others like him have their own sense of fun. Ishu likes it if his mother sings to him, he likes playing with musical toys or those with blinking lights, and he likes going to the temple and folding his hands to do “jai”. He likes walking around his house and fiddling with new things he discovers. He has a 90 per cent disability and will not be able to learn more than one or two words but every new word he learns is a big achievement and it is remarkable that he understands instructions like sit or stand and words like “paani”. Children like Ishu are difficult to train, and it takes many years of love and patience for the rewards to come. “If his requirements are met, I doubt he will miss me. He lives in his own world,” says Ritu but when his father comes back after a long absence Ishu is so overwhelmed with happiness that she sometimes doubts her own words. “God gives special children to special parents, who - he knows - will take care of them. When Ishu responds to what we say, when he is happy to see us, that’s enough for me as a mother. I love him for what he is. I never think of how it would have been if he had been born normal,” says Ritu. When she looks at him and smiles, you know she means every word of what she says. And in her brave and positive outlook, there is a lesson not just for other parents of special children but for all of us. Particularly those parents who don’t want to understand the limitations of their children and are so driven by ambition that they push their kids beyond their capabilities and refuse to accept them for the unique little people they are. 
  
 

Long time before I found my way to big city Delhi and discovered a slice of cake called Black Forest at Nathu’s Pastry Shop in Bengali Market, I knew another Kalu Danda (that’s black forest in my native Garhwali). 

It was the name of my shady pine forested hometown that the British came and “discovered” many decades back when great grandfather was a burping baby. Since they couldn’t pronounce Kalo Danda, they promptly renamed it Lansdowne after some guy back home in England, totally ignoring the fact that 99.9 per cent Garhwalis in Lansdowne had never been formally introduced to him (actually, I’m not even sure about the remaining 0.1 per cent). Since the native Garhwalis had heard gruesome stories of the English chopping off heads of people (or was it wives?) who didn’t agree with them, they decided to accept it. The angrier ones did mutter “kanda dharin” (rough equivalent of ‘burn in hell’) under their breaths at this act of impertinence but the name stuck though most of us locals continue to deliberately mispronounce it as Lansi-dawn just to convey our displeasure regarding that chap Lansdowne, whoever he was. 

To those of you who haven’t been to Lansi-dawn yet, I would suggest book your tickets now. With the way the Indian population is growing (1.7 billion soon says the depressing WHO, shaking a grave head)  you can savour the sheer absence of people, even if you fall in the category that doesn’t get much impressed by lush forests, orchids cascading down trees, blooming red rhododendrons and white daisies by the roadside. You get to see plenty of red roofed British time bungalows too and if you are really lucky you may even run into the ghost of a headless British officer who patrols the cantonment on his horse and wakes up sentries sleeping on duty. Coming back to the British, they made pretty good cantonments even if they could not cure themselves of this penchant for “discovering” already discovered placed and renaming decently named towns. A towering statue of what we Garhwalis stubbornly insist is rifleman Gabbar Singh, Victoria Cross (in effect it is the statue of a fighting soldier that was made in France and then gifted to Lansdowne), overlooks the parade ground where the Army hold attestation parades for smart young recruits with crew cut hair, tarred roads form deep arches into the hill, pine trees drop friendly cones on walkers’ heads and fallen leaves carpet hillsides down which squealing kids take breezy rides in wagons made from broken planks of wood.

You meet runny-nosed boys with apple pink cheeks and school girls with fat pigtails and big red ribbons in their hair. You spot impish local lads by the roadside contemplating the deep questions of life (mostly on the lines of : who could the new tourist in town be, where could he/she have come from; also, where would they be going). A very interesting way to pass the time. Try it sometime. If you walk all the way down to the forest side on the route to Jaiharikhal, you cross on the road cheerful alabaster complexioned local women with sparkling nose pins, carrying loads of grass or wood precariously balanced on their pretty heads. You pass luxurious deodars with spiky edged leaves and clumps of rhododendron trees that sprout bright red blossoms every summer. You hear the ear splitting “kaafal pako, meil na chakho” (the kaafal fruit has ripened but I haven’t tasted it yet) of the shrill and whiny hill bird, you sting your fingers on thorns from the Hisalu bushes on the roadside trying to get at the juicy orange fruit. And if you are in the mood for it, you sample a thali of almost home made lunch of roti, sabzi, dal and tangy raita at one of the two restaurants in the market.

Down Lansdowne’s clean roads, the friendly Whistling Thrush hops down, always a few annoying steps ahead of you; colourful butterflies hover around brilliant blue hydrangeas and Army officers sometimes spot leopards when driving back late from parties. And then there is something that you will seldom see. Locals take pride in the fact that there is no garbage blowing in the breeze. You won’t find empty wafer packets dumped between the daisies or used paper cups chucked into bushes, which is unfortunately how things are in most other hill stations in our country. In the small but neat marketplace, polythene is conspicuous by its absence, the friendly Garhwali bhulla hands out your jalebis and samosas in newspaper bags. And if you happen to run into school kids, it is quite likely that their excitement is about the saplings they have planted to make sure their town stays as green as it has always been. A recipient of the India Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar, Lansdowne is one of the most environment friendly towns of the country. This is one hill station where the air has just got cleaner, the water bodies have increased and the flora and fauna have only multiplied. The Army has constructed a beautiful pond with boating and picnic facilities and populated it with dozens of noisy ducks. Remarkable for a town where water was once a scarcity. Some extensive tree plantation has also been carried out on the surrounding slopes making them greener than they were a few decades back. As for the local people, they have always followed an environment friendly way of life. Over the years children have walked to school. Now, as grown ups, most of them walk to work. Individual cars are few and even these are mostly used for travelling longer distances. Almost everybody walks in Lansdowne.

Perched ethereally on a green hillside that hovers above a vast stretch of pine and oak forests, the pretty little town cuts elegantly into the pristine blue of the Uttarakhand sky. You go to sleep with hundreds of stars shining in the darkness beyond your bedroom window. You wake up with the first rays of the mountain sun and “Om Jai Jagdish Hare” blaring from Gyarasi Lal’s movie hall in the marketplace. Or, you fix an alarm and rise even earlier so that you can slip into your jeans and a sweater, grab a flask of tea and brisk walk all the way to Tiffin Top to watch the sun rise slowly from between the cleft in the mountain peaks, lighting up the ranges with a fascinating white glow that turns to orange as the light spreads across the sky. And there you loll on the bench outside the old stone church, listening to the twitter of the birds. You reach out for the flask and pour yourself some steaming hot ginger tea and you pinch yourself to make sure all that stretches out in front of your eyes is for real. If you are in the mood for conversation, you strike one with a lone early walker (if he is in the mood for conversation too). Or you just enjoy your own company and discover that you’re actually twice as nice as you imagined yourself to be. Spend a few days in Lansdowne and you realize it’s the stuff perfect moments are made of. Oh yes, and if you’re happy enough,  please do us prickly Garhwalis a favour and call it Lansi-dawn. A few times at least.  


 Getting there: Lansdowne is around 250 kms from Delhi. It is named after Lord Lansdowne the then Viceroy of India who is said to have visited the place in 1884. National Highway 119 runs from Delhi all the way to Lansdowne and will take you there in about 6 hours. Kotdwar is the nearest railway station and from there it is 40 kms/an hour drive uphill. Buses and taxis are available at the Kotdwar railway station. Jolly Grant at Dehradun is the nearest airport.

This piece was written for Unboxed Writers. You can visit the website by clicking here: http://unboxedwriters.com/2011/05/some-chap-called-lansdowne/