PREETY, OUR HOUSE MANAGER

Preety, our daughter is a spastic. I might enlighten all those of you who do not know what a spastic or a patient of Cerebral Palsy is.

A spastic is an individual who is fully developed mentally. In some respects, they are perhaps even more developed than average human beings.The word spastic owes its origin to the word 'spasm' or jerky movement. Muscular co-ordination is lacking in spastics. Their movements are jerky and quite often they can not make the smooth normal movements of their feet or hands or for that matter any of their limbs including the tongue.

Our brain has many departments. Some control our vision, some smell, some memory and so on. There is one that controls the co-ordination of voluntary muscles. We have voluntary muscles and involuntary muscles. Involuntary muscles are those, for example that come into play when we instictively withdraw our handswhen we accidentally touch a hot object. Voluntary muscles are those that we use consciously for carrying out some task. The centre of the brain that co-ordinates our voluntary muscles i.e. the one that makes the limbs to do what we want them to do is the one that is affected in the spastics. It does not work properly. As per present knowledge, when this function is paralysed due to one or more of any number of reasons, the person becomes a spastic.

My guess is that they either belong to a different species than the ones from which the present day human beings evolved. It is also possible that they are humans belonging to a different time scale, something on the lines of extra-terrestrial (ET) beings. We may call them extra-chronological (EC) beings.

Whatever it be, Preety is a spastic. She can not stand up, walk, sit up properly, eat or dress by herself. She can not even speak. Communication with her is by gestures or by asking questions whether this is what she means. By shaking her head she indicates yes or no. We have to find out what she wants by the reductio ad absurdum method!

She is either in bed or in a wheel chair all the time. She is fond of current Hindi film music, likes to listen to the radio or watch TV. Her reactions to films shown on TV are quite normal for a girl of her age. She likes the company of girls of her age, is extremely fond of her brothers and makes no bones about being partial to our elder son.

Whenever anything is misplaced in the house, we only ask her and as she observes everyone in the house, she is able to tell us where the misplaced article is. When a particular maternal aunt of mine visits us, she immediately instructs her mother to bring tea and Paan. Similarly, when my paternal aunt visits us, she is never allowed to go without partaking of a meal. The reason is that the aunt like her own self is a daughter of the family and traditions must be observed. She recognizes the steps of my elder brother on the staircase and makes a sound reserved only for him.

We can not scold anyone younger than her as it is her prerogative. the hierarchy must be maintained. If we intervene in any quarrel between her and her brothers, even if we take her side, she turns against us. she makes use of all the tricks at her command to see that her brothers study.

She remembers the birthdays of everyone in the family and begins planning the guest list, the menu and so on much in advance. The birthday boy or girl as the case may be must be kept out of all the planning as the celebration and the birthday gift must be a surprise. The gift has to be handed over by none other than herself.

Her sense of timing is very good as if a watch is implanted in her brain. She asks us to switch on the radio or the TV for her favourite programs without looking at the clock and is always right when she says that it is time for a particular program.

Previously she tried to manage the entire household whether it was cooking or looking after the guests. gradually, it has come down and now she tries to manage only those activities that are relevant to her. her every action tells us that she has perhaps been a manager in a previous form or birth.

Sometimes I wonder if our present day managers or leaders in any walk of life or for that matter our politicians would become spastics in some future birth. Think over. Similarities are many.

In reality, she is like a piece of modern abstract art. Only the painter knows what it is and that too at the time of painting it. In her case, God, our maker alone knows or knew while making her. It surely is not common to be a common man.