People of Value

Ghaziabad

New Delhi

Alpana Nayak

Watching her perform Odissi movements for hours at a stretch makes it difficult to believe that she could barely move till about ten years ago. Even more difficult when it is learnt that she had to give up dance for more than a decade due to a severe cardiac problem. In fact, she resumed dancing just a week after her open heart surgery.

Alpana is simple – she does not look or act like a dancer, no stereotypes here – no outrageous makeup and none of the dreaded artist moods. Her students in tow, she's all care and affection…."and patience," she adds. "That's a prerequisite, while dealing with children, particularly special children", she says.

For the past three years Alpana has been training a group of 17 special children in Odissi at Educatum, an NGO that works for children with special needs in Chander Nagar in Ghaziabad.

"I had never trained special children. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do it. But the kid actually started learning. And that's when I felt may be I could do something more like this", she says.

No one took her seriously, not even the Institute where she offered her services. They said that they would wait and watch. It was a test of patience. And she was given a weekly class to prove it. "But I would go and sit there every day," she says. For months, she says, there was no response from her students. "they cannot be compelled to do something. They will do it as and when they want. That's what you've got to understand while teaching these kids."

Alpana says, her prior teaching experience at the Greenwich University in London helped her a lot in this endeavour.

"During my husband's posting in London, I was working at the Greenwich University on a project for teaching Hindi through music and dance. This was very diverse group – from US, UK, Australia, Africa and Mauritius – age between 5 and 52. The situation I met at Educatum was almost similar. I could almost co-relate. So I used to coax them gently to dance on film songs which they were more familiar with and motivate them with small little presents."

This year, one of these children is appearing for his first year Gandharv Exam in Odissi, at the Association for Learning Performing Arts and Normative Action (ALPANA).

Efforts might have paid off and they might be doing wonders, but even now Alpana's students don't know the name of their mentor. Does it bother her? "They know me as ‘Daas Teacher'. And I don't mind as long as they remember every single line of the songs I have taught them."

Source: Pandey Ritu: Dancing from the heart, Indian Express, New Delhi, 8 May 2005.

Top

Arvind Verma

An accident left Arvind Verma paralysed waist down and tied him to a wheelchair for life. "You want to get something done one way or the other. The accident was a mistake. I had to move on. What happened (the accident), and the after-effects, could not be avoided. So what I figured out was that I needed a solution."

Soon after the accident, Arvind's parents planned for the family to move to England as the facilities for the handicapped where better there. But Arvind (even at that young age) pointed out that such a move would disrupt everybody's life and that the need was to find the willpower to cope with the handicap in India.

He did go to England, to the Stoke Mandeville hospital for spinal injuries but for a short period. At the center Arvind worked hard and in record time put himself back on track. His first encounter with the ‘normal world' was in Switzerland "and there were no special facilities available for the disabled there. This was my baptism with fire."

But back home there was a lot of catching-up to do-at school. "I didn't want to lose a year. I requested my principal that I wanted to be in the same class as my friends, who were then in Class Ten. He cooperated and Arvind completed school at the same time as his fellow students.

"A relative said after my accident that it would have been better if I had died from the fall rather than lead the life of a cripple. It hurt my parents. It was the same when I applied at St Stephen's Collage. They said I wouldn't be able to manage since all classes were held on the upper floors. I made it a point to attend all classes, no matter what. I even asked friends to carry me up. Finally the administration brought down the classes to the ground floor."

After completing BA, Arvind joined Price Waterhouse, and enrolled for Chartered Accountancy at NICA. He worked by day and attended classes in the evening. He got the degree in four years.

But the fight had only reached the halfway mark. In 1977, AIMIL (where he worked) fell in deep financial crisis and he says the shareholders wanted to sell off the company for just Rs 8 lakh. "I thought it was absurd. You don't give up a thing like that without weighing the options…. Just because of a crisis. That's when I stepped in."

In less than three years he downsized the company, increased productivity and completely reorganized AIMIL.

Source: The amazing story of a Delhi man who beat fate and built an empire. Today (Evening ), New Delhi, 9 May 2005.

Top

Shipra Das

"The blind too can see", is what photojournalist Sipra Das has to say about pictures she takes. Despite her friends trying to dissuade her from a ‘not so photogenic' subject, she thought otherwise. In her first ever solo exhibition, that concluded on May 13 at Lalit Kala Academy in New Delhi, around 60 black and white photographs on the life of visually impaired people were exhibited with the support of the National Institute for the Visually Handicapped.

The photograph, clicked over a period of six years, were made possible after she diligently tagged them in their daily lives, to capture that perfect moment.

Says Das, "I feel strongly for visually impaired people. Contrary to our belief that their world is dark, I think it is full of hope. Capturing their various moods is very challenging.

As a fresher in All India Radio News Reel she stumbled into photojournalism to ensure that she had the correct pictures for her articles. But Das, now in her mod-forties, was turned down in the late 70s by Ananda Bazar Patrika, because she was a woman looking for a career in a man's world. That didn't deter her as she says, "Behind the lens, it does not matter whether it's a man or woman. What matters is a quality of pictures shot, which determines your credibility".

Das bought her first camera in 1983, and Asia Pentax K 1000 after managing to cobble together Rs 1,200 with much difficulty. Now, of course, she carries a Nikon FM2.

She has many credits to her name- capturing the mood along the Indo-Pak border at the height of the Kargil War, covering the destruction of temples in the Kashmir Valley by militants where she was caught in the crossfire, and the Andhra Pradesh cyclone, to name a few. She is currently with India Today after her stint with PTI.

Source: Banasree Purkayastha, From the darkroom, Financial Express, New Delhi. 8th May 2005.

Top