The confinement of four walls of a home couldn’t restrict the creativity of a group of special children of Dhanbad, who have made a variety of diyas and candles for this Diwali. A group of around eight students of Jeevan Jyoti, a school for special children of Inner Wheel of Dhanbad, have made a wide variety of attractive designer diyas, including single clay diya with charan paduka, big clay diyas of metallic paint, multicolor clay diyas, wax diyas, empty designer diyas, regular candles, designer candles, floating candles, flower floating candles, etc. during the lockdown.

Products worth Rs 30,000 has already been sold to different people and institutions, including Park Clinic of Dr. SK Karan and Dr. Sageeta Karan; Sonogenes, a clinic of Renu Upadhyay; Hazra Hospital of Dr. CC Hazra and several Rotary Club members, coal officers, etc.

Talking to The Telegraph Online today, Aparna Das, principal of Jeevan Jyoti, said, “Though people from different places outside the district, including Muzaffarpur, Chapra and Patna in Bihar and also Bokaro and other places purchase our diyas and candles ahead of Diwali every year, this year we could not supply the products to them. The town customers are not many and only around 105 students could make the diyas, due to complete suspension of classes for around 40 days during the initial phase of lockdown. We began online classes from the first week of May only.”

“Those who actively participated in diya and candle making drive at their respective homes under the guidance of vocational teachers included, hearing-impaired students – Abhya Abhishek (19), Rahul Kumar (15), Shahid Anwar Ansari (18), Gautam Kumar (15), Niranjan Kumar Sao (14), Zeishan Hussain (16) besides the mentally-retarded students facing learning disability, Shashwat Sharma (16) and Tanisha Kumari (20),” informed Das and added that the online training to the students was provided through Google meet app by vocational teachers of the school, including, Kanchan Prasad, Tumpa Roy, Pawan Kumar and Nabita Das.

“Majority of students who took part in candle making drive this year belonged to the economically weaker section of the society,” said Das and added that Rahul Kumar (15) is the son of a housemaid Rekha Devi while Tanisha Kumari (20) is the daughter of a private sweeper Rohit Ram, who also carries out sweeping at Jeevan Jyoti.

Ranjit Singh, speech therapist cum special educator of the school, said, “The earnings made through the sale of diyas and candles are distributed every year in the form of gifts among the students during Children’s day but as Children’s day this year falls during Diwali, we will be distributing the gifts this year among the students after Diwali.”

He also added that Shakshi Sharma, a former student of Delhi Public School Dhanbad who is presently pursuing B.Com from Maitreyi College of Delhi University, was in her hometown and had purchased the designer diyas and candles from school this morning.

Praising the special children, Sharma said, “Being a member of Rotary Interact Club of Delhi Public School, I always used to visit the school during my school days and feel associated with the exceptional talent of the special students and feel that these children are really special as they concentrate on their work in a better manner than other students.”

Established in September 1989, Jeevan Jyoti at present has 105 students on its roll including 55 mentally-retarded and 50 hearing-impaired students.