ADAPT Mumbai
(Able Disabled All People Together) www.nrcissi.org
By Tara Kilachand
In a corner of Ms Tandel’s nursery class in Colaba, 17 hyper toddlers are jumping up and down. They’ve been promised a puppet show, and having spent the last 15 minutes singing songs, including Pussycat, Pussycat and I’m a little Tea Pot , they are starting to get restless. In a corner, Safa Shaikh, a six-year-old dwarfed in size by her classmates, is feeding her friend Irfan Sayed, 5, biscuits.
Safa and Irfan are two of five disabled children in their class, but since they are sitting on the chattai (mat) with the rest of their boisterous classmates, all dressed in plaid uniforms, it is hard to notice that immediately. And that, in a sense, is exactly what Adapt—which stands for Able Disabled All People Together—hopes to achieve: to integrate children from all socio-economic backgrounds so as to closely mirror a real world experience. Here, the children—some of them in wheelchairs, others with cerebral palsy and physical and mental disabilities—play and learn in the same classroom as able-bodied children from slums and underprivileged backgrounds
Founded in 1973 by Mithu Alur for her daughter Malini, who was born with cerebral palsy, the school—now with branches in Colaba and Bandra, and anganwadis (childcare centres) in Dharavi—was initially meant only for the physically and mentally disabled. However, after extensive research, Alur concluded that an inclusive policy was more beneficial—this led to the forming of The National Resource Centre for Inclusion in 2000.
The Colaba school, in a leafy enclave overlooking the sea, is the first branch to integrate the two groups. Here, with the help of sponsors, donations and grants from the Spastics Society of India, about a 100 schoolchildren, from playschool to class IV, learn math, English, Hindi, science, computers and undergo physical therapy and vocational training. After class IV, some are placed in one of the 60 partner regular schools across the city, or moved to the Bandra branch, which educates children up to class X.
Playtime: Irfan (on the trampoline) and Safa (right) take a break from their lessons. Abhijit Bhatlekar / Mint
I have been assigned to assist with Ms Tandel’s nursery class. Made up of the tiniest tots, the class is also the hardest to corral. Getting them to sit still and recite nursery rhymes, or do just about anything in unison, requires mammoth patience. No sooner does one plop on the floor than another rises, repeating a refrain heard throughout the day: “Teacher, teacher.” Everything from a lost shoe, a half-eaten banana to a missing water bottle and a shove by the class clown calls out for teacher intervention.