Hello All
Copying a posting.
Harish Kotian.
Sunday magazine hindu:
In a special place
JO CHOPRA
Beyond rights, what most of us want is to be accepted and loved. A community in
Bengaluru for adults with special needs provides just that.
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I felt we were in the presence of something profound and remarkable
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Photo: Jo Chopra
Where love blossoms: Frances and (below) Gautam at Camphill Community.
Some experiences are so powerful you have to let them settle a while before you
can say anything coherent. And even then, the questions they raise continue to
disturb and to challenge.
The Camphill Community in Bengaluru is a residential home for adults with
mental handicaps. It's run by a Dutch woman and a South Indian man, along with
a staff of seven local people and a host of young volunteers from all over the
world.
My friend Shaila and I had gone there recently. We arrived to find all the
residents on the front verandah of a beautiful, Laurie Baker-style house. Each
resident had a companion and as we got closer we could see that Saturday was
bath day. Everyone looked damp and very well-scrubbed and the volunteers were
all busy clipping the residents finger- and toe-nails and cleaning their ears
with Q-tips.
Only too aware
I mention this to dispel any notion that I am sentimental or unaware of the
realities of taking care of adults with special needs. My daughter, aged 21,
has severe mental and physical difficulties and there is nothing I have not
done for her. Nothing. I know all about that particular reality.
As we approached the verandah, I heard a woman who soon introduced herself as
Frances telling the volunteers to be sure to sweep well afterwards because, she
said, "Nobody likes walking over someone else's toenail clippings."
This practical and matter-of-fact attitude permeated the place, as it must
whenever there are adult bodies with child-like minds. The most basic of issues
which the rest of us handle ourselves and keep to ourselves, assume enormous
importance in communities of adults with special needs. But here it was
background, a fact like other facts, and nothing more.
What was foreground, indeed, the very ground of their being, was love. I have
been to quite a few residential set-ups for adults with special needs but I
have never seen anything like this one. This young man in the pink shirt - his
name is Gautam - is one example of where I got this idea from . He sat near us
as we talked with Frances and he seemed so happy just to be there, close by,
simply listening. Frances included him gently in the conversation, teasing him
a bit, as a mother might her own child and then sending him off to do whatever
it was he was supposed to be doing then.
I know that the "rights-based approach" is what all of us disability activists
subscribe to in our work and I know that every person with disability has the
same rights that anyone else has. But I also know that there is no law that
guarantees love and that without love, there is no real life.
I have seen set-ups where people with special needs are well cared for (though
in most I have seen even that is dubious). But that isn't what people yearn
for. What we all want, and people with disability are no different, is respect,
dignity, love. We want to be accepted as we are. We want people who look after
us well because they love us. We want a home.
Core beliefs
Camphill is founded on spiritual principles and the people who work in these
communities believe in them deeply. The integrity and inherent worth of every
human being is at the centre of what they believe - this was so evident in
Bengaluru it was hard not to get emotional. Shaila and I felt we were in the
presence of something profound and remarkable, as if we were standing on holy
ground.
Yet, according to Frances, the gift is more often not to the residents but to
those who take care of them. So often, she explained, volunteers come because
they want to do something for society. Yet they themselves are broken and in
need of care - love affairs gone wrong, no direction in their lives, a soulless
marriage or a deadening career - and their year at Camphill allows them to be
healed. By caring for people who are - willingly or not - out of the game of
ambition and achievement and success, they are freed to step back and look at
their own lives, to see what needs to be let go of and to move forward in a
more genuine, truthful way.
I was struck by this photograph of Frances with the dog which they had - of
course - rescued from the street. The respect and interest each seems to have
for the other is the hallmark of what we saw at Camphill. There is nothing
remotely sentimental about it: toenail clippings on the floor, I keep saying to
myself. It's about reality, about respect, about dignity. It's about love. I
saw it myself.
With thanks and regards
(Rajesh Asudani)
Assistant General Manager
Reserve Bank of India
Nagpur
Cell: 9420397185
o: +91 712 2806846
R: 2591349
"The path from dreams to success does exist. May you have the vision to find
it, the courage to get on to it, and
the perseverance to follow it. Wishing you great journey."
-Kalpana Chawla
(An excert from the e-mail Kalpana sent to the students of Punjab Engineering
College from aboard Columbia.)
"The path from dreams to success does exist. May you have the vision to find
it, the courage to get on to it, and
the perseverance to follow it. Wishing you great journey."
-Kalpana Chawla
(An excert from the e mail sent from Columbia
-mail Kalpana sent to the students of Punjab Engineering College from aboard
Columbia.)
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