Kolkata kids with special needs record Durga Puja fun for school project

• A 13-year-old boy with autism spent Puja visiting pandals and eating out with family and recorded his experience in pictures and words for a school project
• A 19-year-old boy, intellectually challenged, saw four pandals this year — one of them a big-ticket one. It was so crowded that he could not click a picture but cut out a photograph of it from a newspaper for the school project
• After two years, many children with special needs spent Durga Puja outside their homes because the reduced number of Covid cases made it possible for them to step out.
• The students were given a project by their institute, Manovikas Kendra, which aimed to “spread awareness and celebrate Durga Puja as an intangible cultural heritage”
• The students were asked to click pictures of pandals or of special moments during Puja, write a few lines, depending on their ability, and make a scrapbook.
• “It is important to tell students that this festival goes beyond the confines of religion, caste, creed or economic status. Children do not discriminate but it is the elders who do so. In fact, children with special needs are very accepting. We have a mixed group of students and among them, there are those who understand and perceive emotions or feelings,” said Anamika Sinha, director of Manovikas Kendra.
• After submitting the projects, the students had a discussion with their teachers about the festival and what they did during the Puja.
• Some spoke little but their teachers asked questions to help them express how they celebrated and how they felt.
• “Students from different castes and religions said they visited pandals. One of them said that it is not a festival only for Bengalis. A Christian girl said she, too, went to see some of the pandals. Some of our students understand that the festival is secular,” said Shyamashree Chakraborty, one of the teachers coordinating the project.
• Not all students have the same level of understanding, said teachers.
• For Raghav Dhanuka, this was a time to go out and see the pandals that he could not in the past two years
• “I love this festival,” he said.
• “The idea was also to help them learn while they enjoy the Puja and depict their joy through a project,” said Sinha.
• Ronit Roychowdhury, 13, with autism, went to some of the big pandals this year and was attracted by the “lights”.
• “After selecting the pictures for the project, he pasted them, something that he enjoys doing. He wrote a line for each and decorated the page as he wanted,” said his mother Payel Roychowdhury.

Some of the scrapbooks the children made