Case Story: Silent Joy
*This is a story about a little boy and his journey of expression, of being heard in silence and sharing parts of himself he had never before with a stranger through art.
It was around the mid of April 2017, when I walked into this tucked in corner called ‘New Creation’. I was a month old in Auroville and already homesick. I knew two things would get me feeling okay. First was to get my own little space and secondly to be around children. And so when I walked into ‘New Creation’, it felt like Divine Intervention. This happened to be a full fledged community with housing(guest houses and apartments), recreational clubs, and to my gratitude, two schools! While
one is a formal CBSE school, the other one is which took my heart away…a smaller experimental learning space called ‘Free Progress’.
At that time, Free Progress had about 30 children, boys and girls aged between 5-15yrs all of who came from the surrounding villages. Some did not have families and were ‘found’ while others had been given up or admitted by their families due to financial or other concerns. These children were housed 10 steps away from the learning space and lived in a well maintained, 2 storey house. There was a big mess area where everyone had all their meals together and next to it a huge stage area – I remember this stage was the first thing that caught my eye. It had (still has) a beautiful metal structure of Mother’s symbol installed right at the centre.
As destiny would have it, Free Progress was looking for volunteers and I fit the bill. To top things off, I was given a beautiful room to live in exchange for my services. I also anticipated with great enthusiasm collaborating with the children as they came from a population I had never gotten the chance to work with before – a humbling and exciting opportunity for any psychotherapist. A week later as things began to settle down, I went to the group where the Raja (name changed) sat. He looked up and followed as I gestured him towards me. As he came closer, I waved a chirpy Hi! to which he replied back with a big grin and we started walking towards an empty corner. We settled ourselves on a mat on the floor, facing each other – both looking at the other expectantly. I smiled and he smiled back, I chirped a Hi! again, and he smiled back, I followed it with some more smiling and asking him how he was, and he smiled back. We must have been sitting like this for sometime because I felt some impatience beginning to rise within me. I
then asked him a little more about himself, his friends, the school etc and he…. yup…he smiled back. I guess thats when it hit me – we were unable to verbally communicate! Raja understood no English (or Hindi or Nepali – the only other two languages I knew!) and I did not understand Tamil – the only language he knew! Well, this was an interesting turn of events. So I just decided to shut up and gently pushed a plain white sheet of paper in front of him accompanied by a box of oil pastels. Within seconds Raja had the oil pastes out and had gotten to work with his colours. I was captivated by his bold strokes and use of colour, the confidence with which his hands moved to draw lines and patterns across the page, it was truly fascinating. While I just sat there followed his hands, in little time his first drawing was complete. He looked at me with that big smile and gently pushed the paper
back towards me. I took my time to go over each element of the paper, tracing the lines with my fingers so that we could rejoice the moment together. As I looked up at him, he pointed to the pile of white sheets next to me. I gave him another and off he went again. After he completed the second piece, he put the two sheets between us. One was a scene from his ‘village’ and the other from his ‘hostel’ and just like that, Raja had welcomed me to his life. Though I must add here that though right now I am in the middle of completing my professional degree in Arts Based Therapy (ABT, at the time I knew very little of Art therapy and less so of its applicability. Hence, my effort then was not to interpret Raja’s drawings nor was it in anyway to use art to reach any therapeutic goal. It was used only as a way to communicate. Also as a principal, I ALWAYS carry (did then
and still do) few white sheets of paper and a box of oil pastels into all my therapy sessions with children. It is fascinating the doorways it opens and the adventures it takes us on!
Raja and myself met regularly for the next 2 weeks and I dearly looked forward to each session. Though after a few sessions we started using single words, he still largely depended on colours and patterns to narrate his stories. I even went into a nearby bookstore and bought myself a English to Tamil dictionary but the Tamil words in the dictionary were too ‘academic’ and something he was not familiar with. The Tamil he learnt while growing up in his village was different.
I remember one day he came into the room, sat down and started working on a paper with a red pencil. He finished the piece in less than 10 minutes and afterwards we just sat together in silence. I don’t know why but I felt a strong urge to sing, and so I sang. After sometime, he turned towards me with that big smile back on his face and walked out of the room. A day later when I asked him about this drawing he titled it ‘Rescue’ (Rani Amma, the hostel warden helped me with the translation). It was around the beginning of the 3rd week that Raja fell terribly ill and his sessions stopped. A few days after that when I went into his dorm to check up on him I was told that his guardians had taken him back to the village just the night before. I never got a chance to see Raja again in the remaining 2 months that I was
there – though I hope to see him again…waiting for the time he immerses himself in the world of colours and patterns and takes me along. Till then I reminisce about the time I shared Silent Joys with a little boy.
Much love,
Nandri
