Yoga Class

I am now at the two week mark of being here in Kolkata and sometimes it feels like I just arrived and other times it feels like I have always been here.  It's strange when you become so comfortable and settled into a routine that you forget there was another routine, another life, another world before this one. How easy it is to forget there was a time when your surroundings were strange and new.  I find it even more strange that I am still surprised by this realization that happens every time I settle into a new life since my life seems to be a series of temporary existences moving from contract to contract, show to show, school to school, city to city.   Some times I feel like the Phoenix, constantly burning my time out in one place and being born new into another.

When I first arrived in Kolkata and the culture shock was so completely overwhelming I would repeat a little mantra to myself, "My name is Meghan Brideen Doherty-Scannell.  I am from Steep Falls, Maine.  My mother's name is Deb, my father's name is Tom.  I have two brothers TJ and Jack.  I leave Kolkata on May 1st.  I do not live here."   I won't pretend that I didn't steal this from The Hunger Games, but it was a great little trick that would help calm me down and remind me that all of this insanity was temporary, it was not my real life.  

I am happy to report that it has been over a week since I have had to use that little trick.

The best word to describe how the work has been going at Daya Dan is erratic.  There has been great progress in many aspects.  A week and a half in and I think the more coherent boys have begun to realize that I am more than just someone who will breeze through.  I am constantly reminding myself not to underestimate any of them.  My friend Mukul is a great example of why.

I met Mukul on my second day at Daya Dan.  He is probably about eleven or twelve years old and again I'm not too sure of what his diagnosis is but at first glance he is vegetable who is mobile.  He does not have good control over his body but he is able to walk, although his arches have fallen and he is incapable of straightening his knees.  He back is hunched and he drools quite a bit.  We sat through mass on Sunday rocking back and forth, holding hands, him drooling and me wiping it up.  After observing him for a while, I noticed that he drifts in and out of (for lack of a better word) consciousness. It reminded me of another boy I had babysat for years ago, who had seizures.  I was alarmed when his mother told me of his condition  and had a visual of this child dropping to the ground and convulsing, but in reality he would simply check out and shake a little, nothing more than a shiver, and then come back to life just as animated before.

  

As I sat wiping Mukul's mouth, I saw a similar glazed look fall over his eyes as he slumped retreating into darkness of his mind and then he would jerk up right, look around,  swallow and a smile would blossom over his face.  When he was animated this boy was so endearing. From far away these kids are needy, dirty,  smelly and covered in God knows what.  But as I get a closer look and begin to figure out the puzzle that is each of their brains I grow ever more fonder of their idiosyncrasies.

 

The programming at Dayan Dan can be a bit inconsistent depending on the skills of the volunteers.  When I started there was a young woman from Spain who had been doing speech therapy with the children.  She left a work book with us when she left so that we could continue her work.   Last week we filed into the meditation room, I flopped down onto the cushy mats eagerly anticipating whatever was next.  I cant say I was actually ready to spear head a speech therapy class, but I certainly was going to shirk off the responsibility when it was thrust upon me.  

The good things about all of these challenges is that I am getting to know these kids so much better.  There is Joahkim who has the sweetest face but sounds like pure gibberish when he talks, Rama who is is shy but bright and affectionate and John who screams like a gremlin till you want him to talk and then he is ever so bashful and down right coy.  Then there is Shubashi who just wants you to talk to him, Noel who can't use his left side and just wants to be held or Benny who has down's syndrome and the craziest extensions.  He nearly kicked me in the face when we were sitting on the floor during mass and he was sitting cross-legged.  Then there is Baskar.  I thought the mashie said his name was Butters (I still call him that) when we first met.  He is eight but he looks about four. He also has down's syndrome and is deaf as a post.  He clings to you like a koala, is covered in boogers, is constantly peeing, rips your hair out, and sits cross legged cross eyed with a grump frown and I love him.  When he latches on to your hair you tickle him then he will let go  and he squirms and giggles and coos.  He is the most adorable thing that you have ever seen. These boys are beginning to open up to me and know me when I arrive and miss me when I'm not there.  

  Since I am here  for so long I have the privilege of being assigned to a child as a tutor.  We are to work on very basic things such as math and basic reading and writing.  The boy I have been assigned to Dilip, (pronounced Dee-leep) and he is tough.  From what I have observed he has autism and obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD.  He spent most of our first lesson perfectly sharpening pencils and then braking them.  He also can get violent.  When I wouldn't let him color he proceeded to rip down some of the posters that decorate his cubicle and take the top of his desk and repeatedly slammed it into the wall.  But I think sister assigned me to him because I don't take crap from anyone, even disabled kids.  He can't really hold a conversation and has problems with his speech.  He is not the cutest, he is not the sweetest, and he is not my favorite but that doesn't mean that he deserves or needs me any less.  

My first day with Dilip I looked through his work book and surprised to see some rather advanced math and some full sentence writing.  He is eleven, but with their schooling being primarily left up to volunteers I wasn't sure how far along he would be.  With any child it can take a while to figure out their learning style and you can spend a fair amount of time spinning your wheels.  With the added complication of autism and tutors changing so frequently there can be a great deal of time that it lost on trying to put the puzzle together.  And when we sat down to attack the first lesson I had planned out I was disappointed to find out that Dilip had not retained much of the information his last tutor had worked with him on over the period of two months.  We sat in a small cubicle both frustrated and feeling quite inadequate. It seemed that he was simply memorizing items on flash cards and not actually being able process the information.  He could put the flash cards in order to spell certain sentences but if I asked him to find the cards that started with B he couldn't.  I felt lost and quite perplexed.  We spent the rest of the lesson writing out the ABCs to build motor skills. Clearly I was going to have to approach this differently. 

After a few lessons, I has picked up with the flash cards that his last teacher worked with him on.  We did some numbers and we were starting to find our rhythm. Dilip was smiling and seemed to enjoy our lesson.  There were no outbursts and no temper tantrums.   I have realized the that he loves animals and colors and I remembered that when I was a kid that my favorite game to play with my mom was memory. So I made some flash cards that had color blocks on them and then the color written out in the corresponding color, then a set with just the word written in the proper color and lastly another set written in black.  We went through the flash cards sounding them out.  He doesn't seem to grasp the concept that letters translate to sounds.  Then we matched up the words written in color with the ones written in black.  When he seemed to be understanding that we moved on to a game of memory. This was actually down right fun, once he understood that he had to wait his turn and not just turn them all over.  We we laughing and as it seemed, learning! Success! I was so proud of Dilip and proud of myself.  

Then like all good things, it came to an end.  What I have learned in my years of working with children is that they want to test the boundaries and figure out what they can get away with.  In the midst of all of our silliness and fun Dilip started taking the flash cards that I had spent the morning making and ripping them in half.  The fun was over.   I immediately took the rest of them away, explained why that was wrong, why I was furious and hurt and got out his boring work book making him write letters over and over.  No more songs, another more colors, no more smiles.  

I knew I had him when after a bit of writing and coming down on him for his posture and form he began looking at me and flashing broad big smiles.  At first I found this alarming.  I thought he was have some sort of fit.  After three with no reaction other than puzzlement from me, he grabbed my arm and turn his head to the side and flashed his ridiculous over smile.

 

"Are you trying to say you're sorry?" 

He nodded, sort of.  I told him that if he was going to be rude and a stinker that we wouldn't play games.  Games are only for good nice boys.  I think he may have understood.

We may never get there, but we are taking steps.