Vishu lives in a house that is dark. I am told there are no windows or courtyard. His mother has to keep him inside the rooms as he runs fast when let out. Vishu is minimally verbal. He has autism.
On APAAR's Nur Mahal outing last weekend July 2, Vishu had the BEST time
.
This monument is a sarai built on the empress Nur Jehan's orders in the seventeenth century. A huge well tended garden, a mosque in the centre, covered wells , the circumference lined with rooms barrack like for travelers in aesthetic brickwork.
Vishu ran up and down the long path from the west to east gates for the whole three hours or so we were there. He sat maybe 10 minutes for his lunch under the large banyan cum mulberry cum neem (yes three trees growing together branches entwined- actually four- I forget the name of the fourth ), then back up and down the path, sometimes stepping into the lawns, once sitting under the airy east entrance where others lounged .
We did not stop him. He was free as a bird-- elated. Feeling the water cooler by the guard's room. Sidling to us when he got by us- smiling , then back running across the complex.
Back and forth like a pendulum.
His joy was to behold. Footloose.. Liberated in a huge green space.
He ran. And ran some more. For three hours.
We did not stop him.
