Juliet Reynolds? book is an incredible and brutally honest account of how an autistic child changed lives, a marriage and work
Before we meet Neema, the autistic boy the writer and her artist husband will bring up, Juliet Reynolds shares a line from The Who?s iconic album Tommy: ?Sickness will surely take the mind/Where minds can?t usually go,/Come on the amazing journey/ And learn all you should know?. Sure enough, it is an incredible journey, bitter-sweet, sometimes terrifying, but a brutally honest account of how Neema changed lives, a marriage and work.
Neema is the son of their maid Nepali Poonam and from the very first time the writer saw him?he was barely one??there was something so beguiling about him that I took an unusual interest in his tiny person?. For one, she listened to his mother?s stories about him and kept a note of it in her mind. Long before he was diagnosed as an autistic child, she noted that ?Neema?s autism had already marked its presence in his soundlessness. Poonam told us that he hardly ever cried, that he was not at all demanding, traits that defined him as an exemplary baby…?
When his mother Poonam is unable to take care of Neema due to largely her self-destructive ways, the writer and artist husband Anil Karanjai find themselves drawn into Neema?s world. And once Neema settled in with them, ?the idea of life without him could not be contemplated?.
Without being sentimental, Reynolds also writes about the great difficulties in handling an autistic child; they had to adjust to his non-verbal ways, his bouts of obstinacy, his uncooperative nature, his frequent illnesses. But like their pets, including a cat named Mao, Neema also gave them plenty to smile about, and many heart-warming moments.
After Anil Karanjai passed away suddenly after a heart attack, at the memorial meeting, Neema raised his hands before anyone else could speak. Pointing to the artist?s self-portrait, Neema began to gesticulate and articulated a ?succession of sounds which might have seemed nonsensical but which were pregnant with meaning… It was as though he were a caged songbird that had found release?. While describing life with Neema, Reynolds gives us an account of his background, his traumatic childhood, his dysfunctional nomadic family and thus a peep into third-world poverty.
Sudipta Datta is a freelancer