Cut to 2003, back in Ghaziabad, where she used to live, Alpana had a request from a neighbour which dramatically changed her life. "She asked me to teach her son Odissi. Only later did I get to know that her son was a special child." That is how she met Tanmay Aggarwal, by far her favourite and most talented student. "He had a congenital problem and a low IQ. But you should see his ability to grasp the intricacies of Odissi," she says. Her journey with Tanmay soon took her to his school where other children were also learning to come to terms with various disabilities.
"At first, everyone discouraged me saying the exercise was depressing and there were no quick results. But I was stubborn and stuck on." With a little help from Dr Parul Saxena who ran an ngo called Educatum for special children, Alpana at last found her true calling. Now with 18 special kids under her tutelage, she is using Odissi to help them improve their motor and cognitive skills. "I was told that the right hemisphere of the brain is for the finer arts while the left is for intelligence. Usually the right hemisphere in these children is not very well developed but the left is. My effort is to stimulate the right hemisphere and help them discover their hidden talents." She not only hopes to teach more children but also spread the word on how dance forms can be used as a teaching aid.
Using Odissi as the platform, Alpana also started introducing kids to classical music and traditional shlokas. The response came as a pleasant surprise. Says Alpana with obvious pride: "Children like Tanmay are almost like prodigies. Others like Pallavi and Sipra have also proved to be promising." While Alpana is yet to perform a ballet with her students, she has managed to organise rudimentary performances with impressive results.
In February, she wrote to President Abdul Kalam about her experiences on working with special kids. She was invited to perform with her children at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. "The president was most encouraging and now I want to hold an annual workshop on using performing arts as a means to help special children become part of the mainstream."
With her society—the Association for Learning Performing Arts and Normative Action, Alpana hopes to extend her work and form a model that can be followed by schools which have children with special needs.
Contact D-II/61 Kaka Nagar, New Delhi-110003. Tel: 011-24351212, Mobile: 9818258551. E-mail: alpanasociety@gmail.com
