When pasta met the podi

Take your taste buds to the party at Le Meridien’s Fusion Food Festival

Pasta cooked with Chettinad Masala at the ‘Fusion Food Festival’ at Latest Recipe Photo: K.Ananthan THE HINDU

The Fusion Food Festival at Le Meridien’s Latest Recipe is an exercise in making up your mind, for every offering straddles multiple cuisines. Continental cooking styles meet South Indian staples; Asian spices grace Italian dishes and Middle-Eastern traditions dilute European sauces. By the end, you’ve got the world hopping on your palate and a brain well-jogged by deciphering what comes from where.

To begin with, we sample some grilled fish marinated with gun powder. “We’ve kept Coimbatore tastes in mind while creating these dishes. They’re all a product of the mixing and matching of cuisines we’ve been experimenting with, to produce something that clicks,” says sous chef Suresh Natarajan. His approach seems right, for the fish is done to perfection and the sharp spices of gunpowder make the oddest but somehow fitting coating. Along similar lines is the sesame grilled lamb chops where the chewy meat is hidden under a thorough barrage of crunchy sesame seeds. Up next are small ground mutton balls tossed in brown sage butter sauce — essentially South Indian urundai soaked in a Continental seasoning.

The absolute winner in the non-vegetarian section though, is Korean spicy chicken served with rava uppuma. Who’d have thought our everyday uppuma would cozy up so comfortably in a Korean gravy? But it beautifully does. A close second is the chicken shawarma served with salad dressed in aioli sauce. The sweetness of the aioli’s mayonnaise well balances the shawarma’s Tandoori masala marination. The meat texture too varies from some parts done soft, to others deeply browned.

The vegetarian section furthers the chefs’ experimental whims. We open with what look like regular kuzhipaniyarams, only, they’re stuffed with either wasabi, basil and garlic, or spicy schezwan sauces. To up the surprise quotient there’s poriyal made from zucchini and bell peppers and pasta cooked with chettinad masala. While the poriyal doesn’t score too high, the pasta makes for an apt marriage between Italy and India. There’s also the suitably bland wok-tossed veggie salad with rosemary and olives, and the slightly odd snake gourd grilled with herbs. What works best here is the kadai paneer au gratin with its generous helpings of cheese and the distinctly Indian-flavoured ratatouille.

The fusion festival sadly doesn’t experiment too much on the dessert front but Latest Recipe does offer its regular menu of desserts and if you worship at the altar of chocolate like I do, there’s plenty to keep you happy. Chocolate tart, fountain, fondue, ice cream, mousse and cake sit pretty beside a coconut cream caramel pudding which holds it own. Over all, the festival is one crafted with scoops of imagination, dollops of creativity and a gentle sprinkling of the wacky.

April 29, 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/Food/when-pasta-met-the-podi/article4666762.ece

No superheroes in these comics

Esther Elias talks to the team behind Manta Ray, the indie comic publishing house that prefers real-life subjects.

Jasjyot Singh Hans’ cover for ‘Love Like a Sunset’ a story in ‘Twelve’

The cover art for ‘Mixtape’

The cover of ‘Preludes’- the zero edition of ‘Twelve’

In December 2010, indie comic publishing house Manta Ray (MaRa) gifted the world its first offering, Hush. Not a word graced its pages, but thick and heavy black brush strokes did. Within 34 pages of taut gut-wrenching narration, it let loose the demons of familial child sexual abuse. It also catapulted MaRa into artist and writer circles nationwide. Over the next two years, fresh storytellers were unearthed, closet artists discovered, and collaborations ensued, the most prolific results of which featured in The Small Picture (TSP) – MaRa’s weekly full-page comic in Mint. With 2013, MaRa floated Mixtape, its bimonthly anthology of comics traversing varied genres of art and story-telling, and Twelve, its series of 12 mini graphic novels each of individual life stories tied together by the theme of choice.

MaRa was birthed when mechanical engineer Pratheek Thomas was on a hiatus from work and his brother Vivek planned to make a film, the story board of which evolved into Hush. It was Pratheek’s college mate, Dileep Cherian who suggested that they self-publish Hush. Together, they co-founded MaRa. In the Indian comic world, overrun by animated mythology and indigenised superheros, MaRa’s content of real-world gritty narratives is a breath of fresh air. “I dressed up as Superman once as a kid, didn’t relate to him then and don’t relate to superheros now,” explains Pratheek. The choice was evident in TSP which has covered everything from suffocation in overcrowded urban spaces to the secret lives of cats, the budget, and modern interpretations of Tagore poetry.

Mixtape follows suit. It features four stories that talk of voyeurism, bisexuality, a bizarre encounter of a boy with a silver spider, and a take on love and longing. This variety is possible because of the myriad backgrounds of their 40-odd writers and artists believes Pratheek. “I’m the only person at MaRa who works at it full time. Writer Gokul Gopalakrishnan, for instance, works as a sub-inspector in Kerala, and illustrator Jasjyot Singh Hans works with Sabyasachi Couture. They’re also spread across the globe from Gurgaon to London, Toronto, Kolkata and Mumbai. So they bring in influences from their different cultures and professions,” says Pratheek. In fact, the core team of MaRa too is geographically scattered. While Pratheek and his wife Tina Thomas are based out of Bangalore, Dileep works from Dubai and art director Prabha Mallya is based in San Francisco, US. “MaRa physically occupies one half of my bedroom, shared with three dogs,” says Pratheek. “The remaining 90 per cent of it is on Gmail,” adds Dileep.

“Mixtape is an experiment in every sense of the word,” writes Pratheek in the anthology’s credits. For one, all of its artists and writers have given their work pro bono. “It takes immense time and effort to put together a comic that takes five minutes to read, and they’ve done that despite knowing they aren’t going to get paid anytime soon,” he says. That is so because Mixtape sells for Rs. 55, a cup of pricey coffee. Moreover, it is in downloadable DRM-free (digital rights management) format which makes it legally distributable any number of times once obtained. “I don’t see it as piracy at all. I want people to feel like they own the work, and that comes with being able to share it anywhere,” says Pratheek.

“The experiment felt like we were tearing our hearts out and putting it out there for the world,” says Prabha, which explains the cover art of Mixtape — an outstretched hand holding a severed heart. Within though, the art is peppered with references to the 90s music culture which created cassettes with a playlist of favourite songs: a mixtape. MaRa is respected for this detailing in its artwork. “We want readers to repeatedly return to the story and find something new each time,” says Prabha. So, they pick stories with layers and the artists literally layer their work too, explains Pratheek.

While Hush and Mixtape are largely silent works in black and white, Twelve is more dialogue driven and uses splashes of colour. “With each project, we try to overcome new challenges. With the earlier works, we got over the fear of panelling right, with Twelve, the challenge was to write dialogue that sounded real,” says Pratheek. On the art front, Prabha says black-and-white pushed them to see how far just two variables could go. “Colour can be a distraction sometimes, but using it occasionally can make it more powerful.” The genres of art too range from brushy textures, to grungy looks, mostly created first on paper with final touches, colour correction and lettering done digitally. “We wanted to front artists who never thought their art could work as comics but find that it can,” says Prabha. The result is signature styling marked by personal stamps. Jasjyot’s art for instance, features beautifully illustrated women, drawn from his experience with fashion, and Prabha’s, reflects her obsession with cats.

“We want to grow into that publishing house which is seen as the first option for original graphic narratives,” says Dileep. In its editorial vision, MaRa is influenced by graphic novel greats. Twelve for example, pays tribute to Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan, creators of Demo, short stories on teenage trials. The hat-tip is first visible in the generous extras delving deep into the people and work backstage. It is also reflected in Twelve’s stories of young Indians faced with life-changing choices. One story narrates Irom Sharmila’s decision at 28 to fast for AFSPA’s abolition, another speaks of a young soldier at the battlefront and still others, of people in love and tough situations. Of MaRa’s unconventional trajectory, Pratheek says, “We’re still finding our feet, but in the years we’ve been around, we’ve grown more confident in our creators, and our stories. We’ve learnt that good content will find its readers.”

April 28, 2013

An edited version of this story was published in the Sunday Magazine here :
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/no-superheroes-in-these-comics/article4661994.ece

Story behind the story

I’ve known of Manta Ray from the Chennai days, back when my roommate read Mint like I read the Bible and cut out each Wednesday’s MaRa comic and stuck it on the cupboard. My relationship with the comic grew from just curiosity about a publishing house that dared so boldly, to respect for the agility with which they maneuvered such diverse themes. The art of course, blew me away from the start. I soon moved out of Chennai and into Coimbatore, never bought Mint but still continued to follow MaRa online. A few months into life here and MaRa released Rather Lovely Thing, one of the stories in Mixtape. I don’t have a steel cupboard to hold stuff on with magnets here, but there is a thermocol wall of wonderful things on which RLT holds pride of place, because few visual narratives have spoken to me as powerfully and moved me so differently each time I’ve read it. Speaking to this bunch of incredible creators was a dream come true. Putting all they had achieved into a few 100 words wasn’t easy and seeing it published on a National platform was such a thrill..but published with errors that weren’t mine, was a lesson in learning to accept what I can’t control, or change…

Learning from the world

An education from MIT, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Berklee, Princeton and other prestigious institutions is just a click away. Their free online courses make dreams come true

A world-class education is just a click away. Photo: S. Siva Saravanan. THE HINDU

On a spring day in September 2012, Anant Agarwal , a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology taught a course called Circuits and Electronics. Unlike his typical class of small numbers, 1,55,000 students across the world tuned in online to take notes. It was the beginning of Edx — Harvard and MIT’s initiative to take top-class education beyond physical barriers. Today, self-directed learners worldwide are acquiring knowledge of everything from differential equations to art history and taught by the world’s best educators. Welcome to the world of MOOCs — massive open online courses — with structured lectures and syllabi that extend from a few weeks to several months.

Edx today is among the world’s top providers of MOOCs, offering 15 courses, ranging from ‘Ancient Greek Hero’ to ‘Human Health and Global Environmental Change’. Also ranked high among MOOC providers is Coursera, with its three million ‘Courserians’ attending 300-plus courses in five languages from 62 universities world-wide. Currently, Indians are the third largest category of Courserians.

Unlike traditional online subject tutorials, MOOCs are time bound. For instance, health reporter Elizabeth John, taking Coursera’s ‘Community Change in Public Health’ course taught by Johns Hopkins, says her course extends from for six weeks, with four-six hours of work each week. Coursera categories its courses by their starting date, into 20 broad subjects including law, medicine and humanities. Each course comes with a brief outline of course content, a week-by-week breakdown of syllabus, a suggested reading list and the minimal subject background required to understand the course. Similarly, MOOC provider Udacity classifies its offerings into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced under five subjects — Business, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Psychology.

The teaching methods across MOOCs range from video recordings of traditional blackboard-and-chalk lectures, to live demonstrations, virtual tours, animations and graphics. “Their lectures are precise and provide enough material to take the learning forward,” says pharmacist Amyn Sopariwalla from Mumbai. MOOCs are also founded on the education principle of ‘connectivism’. Since learners can take multiple courses from multiple universities simultaneously, the learning experience becomes one of making cross-connections across subject boundaries. “I started off mostly with Computer Science MOOCs, because that was my area of study, but then later explored the humanities and philosophy,” says Devavrat Ravetkar from Pune.

Online learners are mostly either school students looking to advance their knowledge with university-level material or college students broadening their current specialty. “MOOCs helped me update the material I’d learnt in college. Since MOOC participants are also from across the world, we learn of the latest developments in different countries,” says Amyn. Some MOOCs evaluate learning through multiple-choice questions and others through peer-reviewed assignments. Most MOOCs also provide a certificate of completion from the university conducting the course. One of the biggest advantages to MOOCs though, is that it introduces the learner to like-minded individuals from different cultures through platforms such as discussion forums for group interaction explains Amyn. “You make global connections by sharing knowledge. Even project collaborations are just a Skype talk away.”

In the few years that MOOCs have been around, they have been touted as the next big learning revolution. While enrolment to these courses, as the name suggests, have been ‘massive’, the numbers completing courses are far fewer. Among the many reasons cited for this are that few MOOCs offer one-on-one interaction with the teacher as the teacher-student ratio is large. Moreover, some MOOC-takers have found that they simply videograph a brick-and-mortar class instead of teaching innovatively. “I didn’t complete my History and Philosophy Course because I just didn’t have the time to,” says Gabriel H. from Chennai. Interestingly, some have ‘audited’ courses — listened in on lectures and done the readings — but not taken the final tests because they were out more for the learning experience than a completion certificate. “I’ve signed up for every single course that Coursera has offered because I know that even if I can’t do it right now, the course material is archived for those who sign up. It’s like having a personal online library of learning resources,” says Devavrat.

For all its advantages, MOOCs are still in their teething phase across the world. Thus far they’ve succeeded in throwing open internationally renowned learning resources for free to anyone with an internet connection and a desire to learn. For those looking for non-certificate free online courses, websites such as Open Culture provide links to hundreds such. Dedicated YouTube channels and iTunes tutorials are also available. There really has never been a better time in education history to take charge of your own learning.

April 25, 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/college-and-university/learning-from-the-world/article4650566.ece

The stories libraries tell

A personal library is reflective of your life’s journey. Esther Elias talks to few bibliophiles about their long-term relationships with books

The Sivakumars’ library prioritises fiction. Everyone, from the Soviet writers in translation to the 90s’ Americans and Europeans and contemporary Indian authors, find their place here. There’s also good mention of Tamil novelists and poets, philosophers and management author. Photo: K. Ananthan THE HINDU

The Venkatachalams’ library delves deep into philosophy, history and the arts. It also reflects Arvind V.’s interests in the sciences, creativity and innovation, as well as Neela V.’s love for Tamil spiritual scholars, poetry and fiction from different cultures. Photo: K. Ananthan THE HINDU

Arvind and Neela Venkatachalam’s library tells a beautiful love story. She loved the classics and biographies; he was into philosophy and metaphysics. They met and fell in love over poetry, Emily Dickinson in particular. “The only possession I brought from home after marriage was my books,” says Neela. “I’d already been collecting books right from childhood,” says Arvind. Together, over two decades, they built a library of over 3,000 books that cover four walls of a cosy room, in shelves that stretch from floor to ceiling. Today, the Venkatachalams are one of Coimbatore’s few families with extensive personal libraries.

Wg. Cdr. (Retd) M. Sivakumar’s library tells a story of a different kind. The collection is almost entirely inherited from his father K. Mahadevan, a man who spent his life with thousands of books stacked in boxes and cupboards, piled on floors and tables, and even lined along the length of his bed. “He never threw away a single scrap of paper. We’ve even found folded book bills for three annas and three paise,” says Sivakumar.

‘Dev’s Library’, as the room is called, is a reflection of Mahadevan’s personal literary journey. “There were certain authors he loved — such as Leon Uris, Arthur Hailey, James Michener, Ken Follet — and he bought every book they published till the day he died.” The collection now includes Indian authors, Soviet writers, philosophy, Tamil fiction and spiritual treatises. After Mahadevan’s death, Sivakumar’s daughters catalogued the library and organised it by genre, with authors arranged alphabetically.

“My library is in nine cupboards, all double-backed, and scattered across the house. So there’s no official classification, but I know where exactly most of the 3,000 books are,” says Daniel Victor. He began reading in his twenties when he realised that there are people, outside his immediate surroundings, whose lives could inspire him. “If one doesn’t move into their orbit, one is so much the lesser.” Daniel began with the philosophers, went onto self-help and personality development, which then lead to management and leadership, all along supplemented by the humanities and his academic reading of business and accounting. Neela read books because they helped her understand of the human experience. “The stories of people from different lands and cultures make real the theories in the humanities.” Every book will lead you to others, believes Arvind. “I read clusters of books from different disciplines that are somehow linked.”

These links are often the subject of the extensive notes Arvind makes across all his book margins. Sometimes, they even spill over into separate notebooks maintained for the purpose. The marginalia alone makes for interesting reading in Sivakumar’s library. A copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, for instance, is countersigned by three generations of users, each of whom have pencilled their views on Romeo and Juliet’s doings. The scribbles also reflect the reader’s current intellectual trajectory. “The questions raised by one book take me to another that may answer it. Sometimes, author catalogues lead me to writers I haven’t read. Otherwise, I collect all the books I can find on something I’m currently interested in — cooking or plants, for instance,” says Daniel. The latter method has seen M. Rangarajan collect over 2,500 books on religion and spirituality, some of them rare, first editions. The interest developed after his retirement as a professor of biotechnology at TNAU. He has spent the last decade translating 14 works of spiritual leaders into Tamil. Extensive reading has led to writing with Neela as well. She has authored books on Saiva Siddhanta philosophy, inspired by her mother-in-law Swarna Somasundaram’s scholarship of the subject.

Besides books, many personal libraries are also storehouses of magazines. Rangarajan’s wife Leela, an avid reader of Tamil literature, spent years subscribing Tamil periodicals such as Ananda Vikatan, Kalki, Rani Muthu, Penmani and Kanmani. “We’d cut out the serialised novels and bind them together. It was a thrill to have the bound version, before the official book was even published!” says Leela. Arvind too has large volumes of ‘Electronics For You’, for he believes that while current publications can provide good information, the understanding of an idea’s evolution is best gotten from archived magazines. While knowledge is priority, Neela adds that magazines and books are what have gotten her through the tough times. “It not just brought Arvind and me together, it’s given us perspective and eased pain.”

April 17, 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/the-stories-libraries-tell/article4623527.ece

Story behind the story

This was such a super-fun story to do – sit around and talk to people about their books in places where the walls around had books enough to bury us in forever. Aaand get books lent/gifted to you in the bargain. Life’s been good the last week.

A platter from Persia

The Persian Food festival at Aloft Hotel in Coimbatore presents signature kebabs and desserts

The spread at the Persian Food Festival. Photo: K. Ananthan THE HINDU

 

An evening that begins with Simon and Garfunkel playing in the backdrop has got to lead somewhere good; even if the American musicians have little to do with the Persian food on offer at Aloft Hotel. We’re welcomed with sharbate-e-khakshir, a beer-yellow drink with swollen basil seeds floating in it.

Scalding hot chicken soup with diced turnip follows. “It’s a basic broth soup made of a tomato base, spiced with pepper, cumin and mint,” explains chef Balaji. The soup is complemented by a light salad of lettuce, cucumber and tomato.

Soon enough, we move onto a main course of kebabs. The set festival menu changes every alternate day. For this evening, there are four varieties of kebabs served with pita bread. Up first is chicken koobideh, accompanied by its mutton version. It’s essentially minced meat, well packed and grilled just right.

There’s also kebab sultani and a chicken shawarma, both of which feature chunks of chicken marinated with spices and lime and served with onion and coriander. For the seasoned Indian palate, not much on the kebab front is new. It’s comfortably familiar territory upto the kashk e bademjan dip, a lovely airy concoction of eggplant, pockmarked with pomegranate seeds.

For vegetarians, there’s dolme felfel (zucchini stuffed with rice), tossed vegetables and shawarma. The main course also features saffron rice served with eggplant and chicken stew, the latter flavoured suspiciously similar to the soup.

Dessert is where the meal gets interesting. We open with apricot tart, a two-tiered rocky affair sandwiching soft cream. There’s also sholezard, a rice pudding. But what takes the cake is ghotaab — a crumbly, cookie-like crust chock-full of almond pounded into submission.

April 17, 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/Food/a-platter-from-persia/article4623543.ece

Teaching without books

Surrounded by her students. Photo: E. Lakshmi Narayanan THE HINDU

As a student, Aarti C. Rajaratnam didn’t quite walk the conventional path. She hung out more with the watchman than in class, trained the school dog to pee on teachers, wrote 14 plays one year and read her way through the school library. Once, a geography teacher interrupted her while she was buried between books, and asked her to cut out the newspaper’s satellite weather forecast picture for two weeks, paste it sequentially in a notebook and trace the movement of the fuzzy white patch. Then the teacher said, “That’s the trajectory of the South-west monsoon. That’s also what’s on Page 144 of our textbook. Now would you like to come to class?” Aarti did.

In adulthood, she went on to design a curriculum that taught through play and took it to 400 schools across rural Tamil Nadu, incorporating teaching tools made from trash. She also became a clinical psychologist, specialising in child and adolescent mental health, to help children drained by an unfriendly education.

Aarti’s work with children began during her Masters in Delhi University, where she interned at Rajkumari Amrit Kaur Child Guidance Centre assessing and counselling 7,500 children in 14 months. “It’s where I learnt to fight for poor and differently-abled children, find schools that would take them in with their difficulties and actually care for them,” she says. In June 2002, Aarti brought these skills back to her hometown, Salem, and began Kriti Play School in a friend’s spare garage, along with Vasanthi Subramaniam. “We wanted to create a space where all nine domains of a child’s development — sensory, self-help, language, physical and gross motor, fine motor, cognitive, emotional, social and spiritual — could be enhanced through daily graded activities. Every child learns through visual, auditory or kinesthetic aids, so we brought these into the classroom too,” she says.

Aarti’s agrees with philosopher Michel Foucault’s theory that prisons and schools have similar architecture because the aim in both is to discipline and correct. “How can you nurture creativity that way?” she asks. Kriti, therefore, has classes without the standard chair-and-desk in rows but with walls lined with everything from tweezers to kitchen scrubs as teaching aids, and a central empty space for children to use them. Over 12 years, Kriti developed 180,000 different activities, each documented to observe the varied skills it promoted. “All higher-order thinking can be traced down to the most basic physical skill. So crawling and reading are linked, as are writing and climbing, and developing better stereognosis, for instance, can help a child weak in calculating probability. By compartmentalising education, we’re actually restricting learning,” she says.

All through Aarti’s journey of discovery at Kriti, she ran a counselling centre as well and observed increasing numbers of neurologically capable children unable to perform at school. Many of them had learning disabilities. “That’s when I realised just how deep-rooted the problems of our education system were and that I was, thus far, reaching out only to people who could afford it. There were thousands in the villages who couldn’t,” she says.

Thus began Aarti’s collaboration with People’s Solidarity Association (PSA), Trichy, which had a network of micro-credit women’s groups across villages in Tamil Nadu. Together, they began one-roomed supplementary education centres where rural children spent their evenings strengthening their English and Math skills through the activity-based curriculum. “The idea was to use community resources to sustain these centres,” says Aarti. So a centre with 20 children, for instance, would have one teacher who was a member of the micro-credit group or an unemployed youth who’d finished school. “We don’t need B.Ed. graduates. We find just one person who wants to give back to their village and train them in the curriculum,” says Aarti.

The training focuses on using locally available material as teaching tools. Hence empty coconut shells, discarded tyres, kola maavu, soda bottle caps, painted stones, feathers, ropes, wires and leaves find their way into daily learning. Explains Aarti, “The training itself teaches through activities, so the trainee gains insight from experiential learning and is able to create teaching tools from absolutely anything.” Aarti also has an elaborate waste management and recycling system in place in which trash from urban schools is directed to the rural centres and converted into education aids there. For example, an activity like threading beads through a rope for hand dexterity is replicated in the village using empty sketch pen barrels instead of beads; and wooden tools are recreated from the cardboard sides of used notebooks. Aarti works closely with each centre for the first three years, after which they grow into self-sufficiency. Over 13 years, through tie-ups with various organisations, today, there are 400 such centres across rural Tamil Nadu.

“A centre survives only if the villager has a sense of ownership over it,” says Aarti. So, in one village, the children’s fathers built the resource room and the centre provides a daily meal made from egg, milk, rice and other produce sold by the micro-credit group mothers. Some centres even kick off with training on pre-natal health, child care and nutrition for mothers. Every centre, though, compulsorily runs through a module on child sexual abuse that teaches the children about their physical, emotional and sexual safety. “There’s much that goes unnoticed because it’s not spoken about and, most often, it is incest. To begin healing, the child needs a therapeutic ally and we train teachers to be that,” says Aarti.

Every new village has caused Aarti to combine her training as a psychologist and experience as an educationist differently; first to gauge the needs specific to the area and second to formulate aid from available resources. The two were tested most vehemently, in early 2005, when People’s Watch roped her in to counsel child victims of the tsunami. Over 7,000 children in 11 villages such as Colachel, Muttam, Kelamanakudi and Mellamanakudi had lost their families, homes and schools. “We couldn’t even think of restarting education because the children had to overcome trauma first. They also had to learn to forgive the sea, which was once their home but had turned hostile,” she says.

The process began by training two teachers — each from the different schools in the villages — to become barefoot counsellors equipped with basic group therapy skills using a combination of creative methods such as puppetry, drama, music and art. Over six months, children sketched their thoughts on blank paper and the counsellors identified those with post-traumatic stress disorder from their art. The early drawings show calm waters full of floating bodies, villagers running from rising waves, families drowning, fishing boats hoisting the dead, mass graves, destroyed churches and schools, suicide and abandonment. Over time though, the pictures evolve to depict rebuilt homes and schools, small festivities, sowing and reaping — semblances of normalcy returning.

Close to a decade has passed but the challenges faced on the coast have permanently shaped Aarti’s approach to teaching, as have the experiences of easing first-generation learners from villages into education. Despite so much accomplished, Aarti interrupts every few lines of conversation with, “We’re here on this earth for barely a few years, but there’s so much we can do that time!” Even so, her immediate plans for the future remain unwritten. She says, “I know there’s a purpose for me and that plan will unfold in time; I’m just an instrument here.”

Published in The Sunday Magazine on April 18, 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/teaching-without-books/article4609709.ece

Story behind the story

In the four hours that Aarti and I spent together, I can’t pick which of her lines moved me most. Our conversation came at a time when much internal questioning had been on, as has been for a while now. And time and again I’ve found that the people currently in my life inadvertently answer these quiet questions. Aarti was one of those. “When you come into the knowledge of your purpose, the way for its fulfillment is ready for you to find it,” she said. It’s what sent her for six months to the tsunami coast without a bank balance to match. Strength of conviction is what its called. The fulfillment of that purpose, she found, brings with it a profound sense of being truly alive, the experience of every moment in all its fullness. I’ve been listening to stories of people who’ve found that pure and absolute freedom, some of it in unimaginable ways. Incidentally, it was in one of these stories of pure insanity, that I found one of the most accessible definitions of this freedom: it’s to be able to fulfill unwritten dreams but take people with you on that journey. It’s reassuring to know the answer doesn’t lie in the unaccompanied climb.

Poetry without words

Severe cerebral palsy has not stopped 17-year-old Jethro Daniel from conveying his thoughts through verse

Beyond disability: Lata Daniel and Daniel Victor with their son Jethro and his collection of verse ‘Don’t Mess Around’. Photo: K. Ananthan THE HINDU

On Daniel Victor and Lata Daniel’s fifth wedding anniversary, their son Jethro Daniel was diagnosed with severe cerebral palsy and microcephaly. The first prevented his brain from coordinating his movements and the second, stunted its growth. “At best, you can only manage the disease,” the doctors told them; “There’s no cure.” As Daniel and Lata drove out of the Mumbai hospital, there was an unusual sense of calm which said, “Now that it’s been allowed to happen, we’ll also be given the strength to overcome.” Today, Jethro is a 17-year-old boy of very few, but profound, words — none spoken but still expressed in a manner most unconventional, often to form poetry.

Jethro’s diagnosis first lead to physiotherapy at the Spastics Society of India but he was left still unable to move individual limbs. He could however, answer ‘yes-or-no’ questions by lunging forward for’ yes’ and backward for ‘no’. His parents tried to enhance this cognitive ability by providing varied stimuli such as plants and toys, and his older sister Rhoda read aloud to him often, but Jethro rarely responded. However, as a four-year-old at a gift shop one day, Jethro lunged toward a box of alphabets which his parents then brought home. “Several days later, we spread the alphabets on our bed, called out each letter and to our greatest surprise he moved toward the right one each time,” says Daniel.

Thus began Jethro’s discovery of self-expression. Soon he signalled at letters to form small words and in time, wrote his first poem to teach his sister the four cardinal points:“Little nose to the North/ South hardly behind/ East on the sunrise site/ West opposite”. “As he grew taller and I grew older, it became difficult to carry him while he lunged towards letters spread far apart,” says Daniel. So now, the letters are arranged in a few rows on a table mat and Jethro sits on Daniel’s lap and signals with his shoulder. Practise has taught Daniel to read his son’s most subtle movements. “A deeper lunge meets a letter in the further row, a smaller one means a letter closer by.”

Through this method, at 16, Jethro penned a small book of 11 verses titled, Don’t Mess Around. They feature his thoughts on pride, creation, honesty, love, the mind, work, youth and the Nation. Of the last he writes, “Wonderful is the state of my parenthood/ Charming is its poise and grandeur/ Without truth and character how barren are you/ Poised the way you were never meant to look.” When Jethro does speak, it’s rarely of himself, says Lata. “He’s deeply intuitive of our personal lives, is very attentive to our conversation and responds to happenings in the world around him, political or otherwise,” she says.

Lata leads two lives — the first Jethro’s and then hers — for Jethro requires her assistance for every movement. He spends most of his day with his limbs held in place by splints, and occupies himself with music, movies and daily physiotherapy. Bringing up Jethro has taught Daniel and Lata much. “Just watching him spend hours together in one place has taught me patience,” says Daniel. Jethro’s story has also moved Rhoda to write a booklet titled A Disabled Hero, about seeing disability differently, which has been translated into local languages.

Jethro’s life has also motivated Daniel and Lata to reach out to others in need. They began in 2011 with setting up small night study centres for children in the villages of Anaikatti and Mettupalayam. This was augmented with a kindergarten school in Pollachi as well as a life skills training and job orientation program for college students finishing their degree. What Daniel and Lata are most passionate about however, is a project they’ve begun in Dharmapuri district where eight families of children with cerebral palsy are provided with a therapist who conducts weekly sessions for each child individually.

Says Daniel, “As a father, all I hoped for Jethro was that he could someday walk and talk. But he showed me early on that because we are so used to the commonplace, we’ve become incapable of believing in even the possibility of the unusual. The truth is as he said one day, ‘To any situation, love and commitment brings hope’.”

April 10, 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/poetry-without-words/article4598446.ece

Story behind the story

I walked home from Jethro’s house that evening overwhelmed beyond words. Jethro is a miracle. There’s not two ways about that. But I also work within a framework that doesn’t quite accept unexplained miracles. We’re all about true and established fact but that’s when I truly understood what Daniel said: We have become so content with the commonplace that our only response to the unusual is to explain it away. After almost two decades with Jethro, Daniel said he knew he’d be a liar if he didn’t tell Jethro’s story to the world. On my walk back home I knew I’d be a coward if I didn’t tell Jethro’s story to the world. So here it is.

Power to the paati

Children orphaned by the death of their HIV positive parents are being cared for by their grandmothers who have found empowerment in their unusual situation

Emboldened and empowered: Grandmothers make the decisions Photo: V. Raju THE HINDU

In the early 90s, South Africa recognised that it hosted the world’s severest HIV/AIDS epidemic. Two decades later, it produced 1.9 million AIDS orphans, for the disease had wiped out an entire generation of HIV-positive parents. It left the older rung of grandparents (often widowed grandmothers) with vulnerable children on their hands. Some returned to till the soil and others lent themselves to housework and small industry, but soon enough, most joined together to pool material resources and emotional support towards empowerment. These collectives of grandmothers are today credited for the upliftment of an otherwise castaway generation.

Meanwhile, in Coimbatore, 46-year-old Selvi lost her daughter and her son-in-law in quick succession to HIV/AIDS. With no one to look after their two daughters, Selvi took them in and admitted them at the local government school. For 10 years since, she has worked all day as house help. It brings in Rs. 2,000 a month — just enough to get by for food and clothing, besides supporting the medical needs of Kannagi, the older, HIV-positive granddaughter. Selvi’s story is like her South African counterparts’, and she is joined by a similar handful of Coimbatore’s grandmothers.

‘We began seeing this trend in the mid 2000s, when the disease had been around long enough to take lives. Through fieldwork for HIV-positive children we discovered some of them were looked after single-handedly by their grandmothers,” says Kezevino Aram, paediatrician and director of Shanti Ashram. From their early 50s to their late 80s, these grandmothers were scattered across Perur, Sundakkamuthur, Karunya, Tirupur and Mettupalayam. Their stories are mostly of hardship, laced however with hope.

S. Ponnammal, 58, works 20 days a month at a plastic carry-bag factory which gives her Rs. 100 each day. The remaining days she cleans homes for an extra Rs. 50 with which she looks after her 10-year-old, HIV-positive grandson Tamizhselvan.

When Tamizhselvan’s parents passed away, his father’s sister undertook the care of his older HIV-negative brother, but left him to Ponnammal.

Besides being alone in the struggle, age and illness often ail most grandmothers. Sixty-nine-year-old Janaki looks after two grandsons, Saravanan and Selvendhran, but is unable to work for a living after a knee-replacement surgery and cataract operation. “We receive rations for food and the government hospital gives Saravanan the medicines he needs for his HIV, but managing the Rs. 700 house rent each month is tough,” she says.

These grandparent-grandchild relationships are rarely one sided though; in fact, it’s raised a group of young children who look after their grandparents in turn. “Selvendhran knows I’m there for him always, so during my eye operation, he accompanied me and looked after me all through,” says Janaki .

Their situations have also made these grandmothers more aware and demanding of their rights says V. Thangakili, Community Development Organiser at Shanti Ashram. “They make sure they have their election card and widow pension for this gives them extra ration. They also take care of themselves better because they know they are the only breadwinners for their children,” she says. Ponnammal agrees saying, “I fought for my house when relatives tried taking it from me, because it’s all I’ve got. I also take better care of my diabetes now.”

Being sole, responsible decision-makers has not just empowered, but emboldened many of these grandmothers. “They see HIV/AIDS awareness from two sides — first from the community’s perspective because they were once outsiders to their children’s HIV and second, as caretakers because they’re now responsible for their grandchildren,” says Dr. Kezevino. Thus while immediate neighbours are unaware of many of their grandchildren’s disease , these grandmothers speak about HIV/AIDS awareness before others.

Ponnammal for instance, has addressed nursing students on being non-discriminatory towards HIV patients, telling them of how when her daughter-in-law was seriously ill, the nurses looking after her refused to change her bed pan for she was HIV-positive. Selvi has also shared her story with others.

Right across however, there is the underlying worry of what happens to their grandchildren after the grandmothers’ time. “We hope to provide some form of ‘death counselling’ to such children because not only must they be prepared to handle their grandmother’s death but also be independent themselves,” says Dr. Kezevino. Fear of the future, however is not priority for 60-year-old M. Kannamal. She says, “What’s the point in fear? I can’t do anything with it. If I think about it always, it’ll take me down. So I forget and keep moving forward.”

All names of grandmothers and grandchildren have been changed to protect privacy on request.

April 8, 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/power-to-the-paati/article4588241.ece

Story behind the story

I met Ponnamal paati at an inter-faith conference in October on possible approaches to HIV/AIDS from religious organisations’ perspective. Her story moved me that day and continued to do so when I met her along with five other grandmothers almost five months later. Selvi paati spoke to me first and broke down by the end. Ponnamal paati came next and her eyes filled up too. By the time Kannamal paati came in, I was ready to sit down and cry but she wasn’t. The boldness in her tale taught me to not see this as a sob story but as a powerful one of women fighting past the tears and onto empowerment. I will never understand what it’s like to be 80 and working for a living for your grandchildren, but I’m humbled to have been let into that story.

Bringing up parents

On World Autism Awareness Week parents speak about the struggles and joys of raising children with autism

Daily achievements bring the greatest pleasure: Children participating in an art competition to mark World Autism Awareness Day in 2009 Photo: S. Subramanium THE HINDU

Shaurya Bhaskar was a young boy diagnosed on the autism spectrum at two and a half. One day, as he sat fidgeting on the swing in the park, a woman walked by his mother Abirami Duraiswamy and asked her, “Avan loose-aa?” Society’s regressive classification of Shaurya has lasted his 10 years. “Despite his academic competence, I approached 30 different schools before one finally gave Shaurya admission. No one was willing to try accommodating him even if I promised to help him in class myself,” says Abirami. Most parents of autistic children have these tales of rejection. And the struggle begins right at birth.

Preetha’s son Ravi spent his first two years with paediatricians being treated for kidney problems, but Preetha knew something wasn’t right with him otherwise as well. However, it was long before he was diagnosed autistic.

“I lost the period of early intervention because no paediatrician noticed the signs. Parents will never take their newborn to a psychologist or a psychiatrist for testing. Since autism can be picked up as early as six months, gynaecologists and paediatricians – professionals involved in the child’s initial years – must be trained to do so,” says Preetha. Finding the right diagnosis for his son was Karan Ram’s first nightmare. “There were times when I’d spend 20 hours a day on Google researching my son’s symptoms even when my paediatrician said he was fine.”

Like Karan, most parents of autistic children tend to become unofficial psychologists, therapists and special educators in the process of understanding their children. Harsha Shah, mother to 20-year-old Neel says two decades ago, Coimbatore barely had the resources or awareness to manage her autistic son. She hence procured tools and books from the US and taught herself to cope. Across parents, there’s a resounding sense of being alone in the fight against autism. Says Abirami, “I read Catherine Maurice’s book Let Me Hear Your Voice and I decided that I am going to pull Shaurya out of his autism myself. But within eight months I had seeped into deep depression.”

The absence of a support system is the biggest lacuna believes Bernard Thomas, father to two autistic children. He speaks of support groups abroad such as respite systems (teams of professionals who handle children completely) and parent groups where parents meet and take turns to look after all their children for a few hours while other parents relax.

“In India however, there was a time when I slept two hours and traveled 85 km each day taking my children to the speech therapist, occupational therapist, physiotherapist, and special educator, all in different parts of the city,” says Bernard’s wife Jean. The lack of interconnection between services leaves the parent to judge the effectiveness and necessity of each therapy. “At the end of the day, I knew that I had to find the right people to help my child, I had to do all the follow up and I had to measure his progress. Even when society says a child with autism cannot achieve, I had to believe he could,” says Renuka, mother to an eight-year-old autistic son.

For Jean, the need to become self-sufficient for her children, lead her to learn Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), an approach which few Indians are certified in, and train her daughter herself. She believes that India also faces the challenge of poor research and few therapists qualified in the latest methods. “Sometimes, all you need is the right method to teach your child a skill. It shouldn’t take more than a few months to toilet train your child, but it took my daughter eight years because I didn’t have the right tools.” For some parents the self-dependence can lead to extreme stress and frustration observes Bernard. “Parents tend to either go into denial or take their anger out on their child and hence, abuse is often common in these families,” he says.

For all its challenges, having an autistic child has given them a radically new perspective on the world say parents. “The focus isn’t on picking engineering or medicine for my son’s future. It’s about ensuring he has basic living skills so that he isn’t a burden on anyone after my time,” says Sriram Narayan. And it’s in these small daily achievements that immense pleasure lies. “I may have worked with Neel for weeks on end with no results but the day we breakthrough and he smiles, it’s like God smiling at me,” says Harsha. Adds Bernard, “We’ve grown closer as a family and learnt to find value in more than the material, and in the non-typical. That’s the essence of this life.”

Some names have been changed to protect privacy on request.

April 3, 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/bringing-up-parents/article4573357.ece

Story behind the story

This was the first time I did a multiple source story with all of them in one room. We began with a short summary of each person’s introduction into the world of autism and by the time we were onto the third story, inhibitions were let loose, barriers of strangeness were broken and the stories poured forth. For almost three hours I listened to personal histories of rejection, struggle and loneliness but not once laced with self-pity. Hindsight had given them perspective, so some of the most heart-rending stories were laughed through. By the end, my mind was reeling and I’d had my guts yanked out and trampled all over. So much for unimpassioned objectivity. I came away more convinced than ever before that these stories have to be told. The understanding of the Indian experience of autism has to put on the map. Someday. Someday soon.

The gift of a special child

Deepa Mohanraj and Annapoorna Jayaram began the Sri Prashanthi Academy to help special children find their place in the world. They share their experiences with Esther Elias

Together for special children: Deepa Mohanraj, who began Sri Prashanthi Academy with Annapoorna Jayaram, is backed by the team of special educators and therapists. Annapoorna was away in the U.S. at the time of this photo shoot Photo: M. Periasamy THE HINDU

In the winter of 2002, a beautiful girl named Richee was born to Deepa Mohanraj. Over time though, Deepa’s motherly instincts told her something wasn’t right with Richee. She was later diagnosed with craniosynostosis, a condition that prevented her brain from growing. For three months, Deepa experienced suicidal depression. But life turned around the day Richee lay on the operation table. While family cried outside, Deepa was moved to thank God that there was hope for her child. Back home, as Richee slept recovering from surgery, Deepa felt her say, “I have come into your life so that you will know true happiness.” Through Sri Prashanthi Academy (SPA) — Deepa and her partner Annapoorna Jayaram’s school for over 90 intellectually challenged children — that prophecy has come true.

In early 2005, Annapoorna moved into Coimbatore with her 20-year-old daughter Archana, who has Down’s Syndrome. With degrees and diplomas in special education, and seven years of experience running a special school in Kuwait, Annapoorna hoped to begin one in Coimbatore.

On January 26, 2006 Deepa met Annapoorna, found a kindred soul, and together, they began SPA in June with their daughters, an autistic boy, a helper and an occupational therapist. “Word soon spread, more children joined us and in September, we moved into my father-in-law’s house in NGGO Colony,” says Deepa

SPA grew according to the needs of the children admitted. “Intellectually challenged children can be mainstreamed if intervention is done early enough. There’s a misconception that if children cannot write or speak, they cannot grow intellectually. All you need is to find the right mode of communication for each child,” says Annapoorna who handles SPA’s curriculum.

Children between one and three, therefore, are trained through SPA’s early intervention program which focuses on pre-reading skills, basic writing, and activities of daily living such as toileting, clothing themselves and eating.

Many of SPA’s children are also non-verbal and so the curriculum is strongly visual. Classrooms, for instance, are covered with picture cards that indicate the day’s schedule and its lessons. Each class of 10 or 12 has one special educator who leads the class, with two assistants and a helper who aid each child individually. There are also occupational therapists, naturopathy doctors, physical education instructors and speech pathologists that work closely with the children to ease them out of their specific difficulties.

“When children join us, we assess their current abilities and group them with those who are similarly skilled and are around the same age group. If a 10-year-old boy with the capabilities of a three-year-old is grouped with the toddlers, his self-esteem will drop,” explains Annapoorna. Hence SPA has three academic classes, graded by age, that teach the equivalent of the CBSE Board’s Class I to III. Each class also has children with different intellectual challenges, for each child’s ability makes up for other’s weaknesses. For example, Krithika who has attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder jumps around the class singing and clapping her hands, but her infectious energy draws in autistic, and hence more introverted, Manav, who soon sings her song.

While scholastic milestones are important, Annapoorna believes that for older children with late intervention the focus must be on functional academics. “An education that doesn’t make them independent is no education,” she says. Thus began the vocational and pre-vocational batches for those above 13 years.

Here students learn to shop, handle money, cook, bake, weave mats, thread garlands and garden. For lunch this afternoon there’s the yummiest tomato rice and chutney with onions from the school’s organic garden. “By this age, children are too old for occupational therapy to fix their fine and gross motor skills but such activities do it for them instead, besides providing them with possible livelihood options,” says Deepa.

Over the next few years, SPA hopes to equip students with production skills so that they can be self-employed, as well as tie up with companies that would employ them.

The biggest challenge to special education however, is not the child’s difficulties but parental acceptance says Deepa, for if the parent gives in and gives up, the child will too. “I had to stop blaming myself and asking ‘why-me’ before I could look forward and believe that there is a positive future for Archana,” says Annapoorna. Parents with such faith have brought SPA through the last seven years. There is now a branch in Tirupur for 30 children, and they plan to start a bigger campus named Kaumaram Prashanthi Academy at Chinnavedampatti later this year.

Says Deepa, “Richee taught me how to live every moment of my life well. She took me from just ‘being’ into well-being. I want every parent of a special child to know just how blessed they can be and that they are chosen for a purpose.”

March 29, 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/society/the-gift-of-a-special-child/article4557842.ece

Story behind the story

To my dying day, I don’t want to forget that piercing shine in Deepa ma’am’s eyes as she spoke of what Richee meant to her; of how dramatically she changed her from a naive 22-year-old to a woman with the fiercest convictions. My every hair stands on end just thinking of it. That must be what it’s like to ooze life from every pore, to be alive; really truly alive.