From & To Sathish #6 - Page 30

https://youtu.be/VChwoluq5-s?si=iIjL_XkImgHyPPe-

India 2 trailer vs Thuglife teaser. Shankar vs Mani Ratnam. Kamal vs Kamal.

https://youtu.be/kqGj31bQQQ0?si=CMsXqHcde9HYqTAo

I wish India Forums and all the members a very Happy Diwali. All the best.

Avan, Aval Adhu 507

help----- to do something for somebody in order to be useful or to make something easier for him/her. to give or provide what is necessary to accomplish a task or satisfy a need; contribute strength or means to; render assistance to; cooperate effectively with; aid; assist:

The word help has its origins from the Middle English helpen, from Old English helpan (“to help, aid, assist, benefit, relieve, cure”),

Dharmalingam and Thamarai watched sadly as the body of Meenakshi was slowly lowered by the people of Perumalvaram into the ancient earth of the forest and laid to rest in its final position. Both thought it, felt it but stood unable to express their grief for their minds were numb with it.

Azhagan who was standing opposite them across the grave, asked Dharmalingam if he was sure about Meenakshi being buried there and if they should go ahead with the ritual and complete it.

Dharmalinga Thevar looked at his wife Thamarai and told Azhagan that they both were sure and requested Azhagan to go ahead with the burial.

' Iyaa, I doubt if my child would have had a better funeral than what she is getting here and maybe if we wake her up and ask her about it, she might say the same thing ' and looking at the neem tree that stood tall over the old grave of Sundaram and the new grave in which Meenakshi lay in, he smiled sadly and asked the guardian of the forest, ' Iyaa, I want you to do something for me. Promise me that you will do it.

Azhagan smiled, ' I promise, sir.

' But, iyaa, you don't even know what I am going to ask of you '.

' It does not matter, sir. Ask of me what you desire and I promise to do it. If I don't then someone from my family will see it done.

Dharmalingam thanked him and then looked at his wife, who nodded and turning to Azhagan asked if they both could be buried in the same spot when their time to rest permanently came and added, ' Not just because both my children are resting here but because it is so calm and peacful in this forest. then, again, you will be here and always around us ' Dharmalingam said and asked, ' Do you promise, sir?'

Azhagan promised him and then looked at Madhu and asked her if she had any thoughts or anything to say to Meenakshi before her grave was covered up.

Malar found this question of her husband and king rather strange and mystifying and asked him what he felt Madhu would have to say to the dead Meenakshi other than wishing her peace in death.

Azhagan looked at her and whispered, ' My queen, a few minutes ago, you spoke to me through your mind and asked me if it was necessary and at the same prudent to continue involving myself with the affairs of Madhu and Ravi.

' Yes, I did, my lord and I did that not just as your friend and wife but also as the queen of Perumalvaram. We agreed that we will not interfere in these human lives and will stay away and leave them to their fates.

Azhagan smiled and in a soft voice, ' Yes, my queen. I remember our agreement. But....' and pointed to Madhu who slowly sank into the soft, wet soil that had been unearthed from the grave and sat staring down into the pit where Meenakshi lay in a state of deep sleep.

' Meenakshi, Meena' Madhu called to her and then she slowly removed the knots of thread that held the sacred Kali yantra Pendant and closing her eyes, whispered a powerful Kali Mantra and dropped it into the grave and on top of Meenakshi's chest and said, ' It will protect you like Ravi wanted it to protect me. This is my gift to you. The gift that Ravi whom you loved so much tied around my neck. You need it now more than me. Bye Meena. I hope we meet again in some other life. Godspeed.'

What happened in the grave was seen and felt only by Madhu and Azhagan.

Uknownst to all others around them, the grave seemed to shimmer in some strange kind of light and aura. Unknownst to Madhu, who had slowly dropped the Kali Pendant that had been tied as a Mangalsutra around her neck by Ravi on top of the dead Meenakshi, she also had unknowingly dropped tears on her body.

Madhu who was just about to get up, was shocked to see a strange glow hover all around Meenakshi's face and then to her shock and horror, her eyes, beautiful even in death, opened wide and stared into Madhu's soul.

Both women looked at each other. One alive and the other dead. One lay in a state of permament rest while the other sat in a temporary state of life.

Madhurima could not believe her eyes and she smiled happily and tried to scream, ' Meenakshi is alive. Meena is not dead. Our Meenakshi has come back to us. Thank God'.

Nobody but Azhagan heard her quiet mind screams and he whispered to her, ' Child, she is dead and yet she has come alive to reach out to you. She has come alive because of your pure love and because of your supreme sacrifice. Talk to her before it is too late'.

Madhurima looked into Meenakshi's eyes and whispered, ' I am sorry, Meena. I wish things, our lives had been different. Please forgive Ravi and bless him with a long, healthy and peaceful life. If you want to punish anyone or if you are angry with anyone, let it be me. Take it out on me. But, please spare Ravi. He has suffered in one life what most would endure in a thousand lives.'

Meenakshi stood up and gently floated up and reaching Madhu, gently embraced her and whispered, ' Madhu, I am the one who should be apologizing to you and Ravi. Don't be sorry for anything. You did nothing wrong. I am the one to blame and I have paid it with my life. I am in peace now and I am happy now.'

Both women, dead and living stared at each other and then Meenakshi gently kissed Madhu's forehead and whispered, ' Take care of yourself and take care of Ravi ' and looking down at the sacred Kali pendant, ' I thought I would go to a different place but this act of yours and this pendant seems to have worked some strange kind of magic. Thank you.'

Azhagan looked at Malar whose right hand he had grasped and thus had enable her to see and hear everything that Madhurima had seen and felt and asked her, ' What was that about our agreement and our collective decision not to interfere in human lives?'

Malar grasping his hand fiercely, whispered, ' I was wrong, my king.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl7J2EaUK1M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YQeiNsDU9o

Avan, Aval Adhu 508

Both Dharmalinga Thevar and Thamarai saw Madhurima remove the Kali Pendant that Ravi had tied as a thali around her neck and even as they were wondering what she was doing, it had been dropped onto their dead daughter's body.

Not only were they shocked into inaction by Madhu's action, they were also at the same time moved beyond words and they knew that through their daughter's death, they had gained a new child.

What happened next had been seen only by Madhu and Azhagan ( yes, Meenakshi too) but somehow they both felt something going on in Madhu's head as she sat staring down at their daughter's grave. Yet, they remained silent and then it was over.

A life that once was now lay buried in a new womb inside the earth and all of them stood watching the mysterious and unknown action that is death.

Azhagan placed his hand on the large neem tree and gently shook it and the tree rained down thousands of tiny neem flowers and in a few moments covered it in such a way that everyone there thought a soft pale shroud had been laid on the grave.

' It is done ' he declared and looked at Madhu and Meenakshi's parents and said, ' Buddha will walk you home now.'

Madhurima thanked him and then slowly bent down and touching his feet whispered, ' Watch over her, him and all of them, please. I beg of you.

Azhagan smiling quietly whispered into her mind, ' I will and I also will watch over you. Promise.'

Dharmalinga Thevar and Thamarai tried to touch his feet but Azhagan stopped them, ' No. Please, no. There is no need for that.'

Thamarai looked at Meenakshi's grave and Azhagan understanding her thoughts, told them that they could visit the site anytime they wished to do so.

Closing his eyes, he chanted something and then he slowly looked at them and said, ' You and your family are now part of this forest. This is now your land and you can come and go as you please. No one will stop you. Every tree and every life in this land will watch over you and protect you.'

Madhu, Thamarai and Dharmalinga Thevar slowly walked out of the forest with Buddha leading them and just as they reached the edge of the forest and were about to cross over into Kumarapalayam, the huge lion stopped and turned and looked at them.

' Blessed. All of you are really blessed and in my opinion, the luckiest souls on this planet. I don't know what he sees in you human beings for I surely don't and I am not going to change the poor opinion I have of your species in the near and distant future.'

Madhurima walked boldly towards the huge beast and cupping its face in her hands gently placed her forehead against its forehead and said, ' Thank you Buddha. Thank you for everything. '

Buddha growled and its green eyes flared into tiny flames and it whispered, ' You are welcome. I hope everything works out well for you. It will for sure since you are now under his protective wing'.

Madhurima nodded, ' I know and once again, I thank you for all that you and Azhagan have done for me and my family,'

Dharmalingam and Thamarai who stood a few feet back nearly screamed in fear when the lion suddenly raised a huge paw and then sighed in relief when they saw it place it on Madhu's shoulder and say something to her. They were too far away to hear what the lion was telling Madhu or what Madhu appeared to be telling the lion.

Strangely, it would not have helped them to hear better even if they had stood next to Madhu for Buddha was conversing through its thoughts.

Buddha the lion stared at Madhurima and said, ' What you thought, saw, and felt by the grave was all real'.

Madhu gasped, ' You saw it. You too felt it ' and then crying happy tears, ' So, I did not imagine all that. I really saw Meena?'

Buddha smiled and said, ' Yes. I saw it and he did, obviously for nothing escapes his eyes or his soul.'

Madhurima stopped and stared at Buddha the lion in shock and sputtered, ' That means, it means... that there is something after we die. There is something left outside the body'.

Buddha stood up on all its four legs and with a smile replied, ' Maybe Madhu but it is a topic that even he knows very little about. We generally brush those incidents as Magic and matters of a higher power '.

'Only one other human is being that I know of who experienced what you just did ' Buddha the lion said and then frowning angrily began to walk away complaining, ' Although he is not human anymore for he is one of us. But when he saw and felt what he felt, he was human and that is special like you are. God bless you, Madhu and don't worry, it is going to be okay in the end.'

All three stood watching Buddha vanish into the darkness of the forest and then Madhu's lips moved as they echoed Buddha's final words, ' It is going to be okay in the end. In the end... that means..?'

Thamarai looked at her and said, ' That means we still have Ravi to handle and who knows what is going in that boy's head'.

Raising Alexander by Chris Turner

Alexander was a strangely motionless and silent baby, and doctors knew of fewer than 100 cases like his in the world.

For the first six months of Alexander’s life, I wanted to believe he might get well on his own. I would often lie down on the floor and make faces at him, trying to tease out a smile.

Sometimes, after lots of effort, it worked. But mostly, my son was motionless and silent, his eyes focused on nothing in particular.

It was fall 2009, and my wife, Ashley, and I had only just moved into a new home in downtown Calgary, Alberta. We had a vivacious four-year-old daughter named Sloane, a grouchy Siamese cat, and an infant son who was a mystery. Alexander had been born hypotonic—floppy, basically—with an abdominal hernia, a heart murmur, strange folds on his ears, and a V-shaped birthmark in the center of his forehead. The geneticist assigned to us in intensive care, Micheil Innes, knew these were markers of a genetic disorder, but he couldn’t identify which one it was.

Even after Alexander was healthy enough to come home, he was undersized and underweight, hardly able to hold up his head. Amid the rush of feeding and diapers and getting Sloane to school, I could pretend he was just a little quiet and weak for his age. But the truth is, we often wondered if there was any awareness inside him at all.

The first tentative answer arrived on a dark afternoon in December. We were called to a small room at the Alberta Children’s Hospital, where Innes explained that a piece of our son’s genetic coding simply wasn’t there. He showed us Alexander’s lab results: rows of striped squiggles like some ancient alphabet and a red dot indicating the location of the missing material, near the end of the “q” branch of the ninth pair of chromosomes. The precise spot, in technical terms, was 9q34.3.

Innes then handed us a pamphlet that had been printed from a website. The document explained that “9q34.3 subtelomeric deletion syndrome” was usually an uninherited, spontaneous mutation, likely occurring at conception. The condition is also called Kleefstra syndrome, after a Dutch researcher who studies it. Innes believed there were fewer than 100 verified diagnoses worldwide at the time. Alexander’s developmental problems were born of a single cause—the tiniest of wounds, duplicated in every single cell in his body, forever. Because there were so few cases, the pamphlet provided anecdotes rather than a prognosis: a series of expected obstacles—to speech, mobility, learning—that our son might overcome, if lucky, after a lifetime of hard work.

Ashley and I drove home from the hospital in devastated silence, as if some vital swatch of our family’s fabric had been ripped away. We were terrified that our mute child would never walk or talk, let alone run across a playground or march up the aisle at his wedding. Later, as I watched Alexander in bed, I was too numb even to cry. I started to indulge in wishful thinking. Maybe he’ll simply catch up to his peers, I thought. Maybe someone will figure out how to fix this. I was convinced, in any case, that I couldn’t.

A few days after meeting the geneticist, we were having dinner when Sloane left her seat and skipped to her brother in his high chair at the other end of the table. We hadn’t discussed Alexander’s diagnosis with her, but Sloane’s internal radar for her parents’ moods had always been impeccable, and we were both far too shaken to hide it very well. My wife, usually a boisterous, no-holds-barred play fighter, had already stopped the roughhousing as the house filled with a formless, boundless anxiety.

Sloane set herself up behind Alexander, hands clutching either side of his chair, and flung herself from one side of his head to the other. With each swing, she bellowed, “Hello, Mr. Chubby Cheeks!” Alexander began to swing his head back and forth in time with her. His face erupted in a gap-mouthed grin. And then, for the first time in his life, Alexander laughed. Hard. A sudden gurgling, exuberant laugh. And then we all did.

Somewhere on the other side of the diagnosis was a boy who could feel joy. It was our job to find him.

We began where almost all parents with a special-needs child begin: monthly visits to an overworked early intervention clinic that recommended rudimentary physical therapy—exercises to encourage rolling over and sitting up, for example. The workouts seemed arbitrary and totally out of proportion to Alexander’s need, like Band-Aids on broken limbs.

My wife pushed the therapists at the clinic for better ways to address Alexander’s disorder. They were kind and competent, but Kleefstra syndrome was a question mark for them too. The message was to wait and see, to react once Alexander’s symptoms were clearer. Had we acquiesced, the “intensive” part of my son’s therapy would’ve started around the age of three, at the earliest.

Ashley has never accepted the default position on anything, and when it came to her fear of her son’s diminished prospects, she was relentless. She used her background as a research editor and radio producer to dig deeper. Books on disability and the brain piled up on her bedside table. One title was Glenn Doman’s What to Do About Your Brain-Injured Child. Doman—who died in 2013, at 93—was the founder of the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, an unconventional teaching institute in Philadelphia. Using its methods, neurologically impaired kids learn not only to walk and talk but to read and count—often well ahead of unimpaired peers. Ashley had been begging me to look at Alexander’s condition as a crisis that, though it could never be eradicated, could be treated. Here, finally, was corroborating evidence.

As a physical therapist in the 1940s, Doman was frustrated by the high failure rate of the techniques used on stroke victims and, later, children with disabilities. He and his associates at the clinic developed a new approach founded on the theory that the brain can grow and change through use—today called neuroplasticity. His clinic amassed evidence, case by case, that with enough hard work, kids like Alexander often exceeded every limitation that had been placed on them.

At that point, the simple exercises at the clinic inspired nothing but frustration from Alexander. But following specifications in a book by Doman’s son, Douglas, my father and I built a “crawling track” in our living room. It was a simple ramp with low sides made of heavy plywood, like a jungle gym slide, wrapped in padding and turquoise vinyl. Following the instructions, we propped the track at an incline steep enough that Alexander’s slightest wiggle would result in movement. Then, against any number of parental instincts, we placed my son at the top. He was seven months old and had never willfully moved an inch in his life. He howled in protest, squirmed in defiance—and the motion sent him skidding down the track.

Within a week, he was propelling himself, angry at first, but eventually with resolve and even joy. We reduced the incline as he improved, until it was lying flat. A few months later, he crawled right off the end of it. And then he kept right on going.

We signed up for the next available introductory session at Glenn Doman’s clinic, now directed by his daughter-in-law, Rosalind. Alexander was the first diagnosed Kleefstra kid the clinic would ever treat.

In Philadelphia the following April, when Alexander was just 11 months old, we found ourselves surrounded by three dozen parents who had come from as far away as Belarus, Singapore, and India. In a week of all-day lectures, our expectations for Alexander—and for our role in his therapy—were turned upside down. The clinic’s program was wildly ambitious and nearly impossible to implement fully. It involved almost constant, regimented stimulation, physical activity, and intellectual engagement: daily crawling distance targets, reading and math exercises, workouts aimed at improving breathing and coordination—all of it done by parents themselves. As Rosalind told us at the time, “There are lots of reasonable programs out there. Trouble is, they don’t work very well.”

When we returned home the next week, we reorganized the main floor of our house around Alexander’s therapy. We filled our living room with mats and flash cards emblazoned with words and dots for counting. As part of Alexander’s physical therapy, we installed an elaborate “monkey bars” ladder apparatus. (Learning to walk while alternating hands on the rungs would help train Alexander’s brain in “cross-pattern” movement, and the raised arms would encourage good posture.) Our son’s diet was stripped of known allergens and inflammatories to eliminate any possible nutritional impediments to his development. His daily regimen looked like something prescribed to an Olympic athlete.

The standard approach for a developmentally delayed person is not this ambitious. But we didn’t want to wait until after our child’s malleable brain had stiffened into adulthood. Ashley and I now had the tools to make the most of Alexander’s crucial early years. We intended to use them all.

Ashley threw herself into running Alexander’s therapy program full-time, and my daily routine as a work-from-home freelancer soon involved at least as much duty as a therapy assistant. The stress was enormous, and our debt grew whenever we sacrificed more work time for Alexander’s sessions. For my wife, the manager of our ersatz team, administering the multiple programs meant constructing a self-made cage. Once, our professional lives had involved extended research trips, and now whole weeks could pass without either of us leaving the house except to ferry our daughter to and from school.

Still, we agreed that the strain on our family was far better than the despair of not knowing what to do. We believed, most of the time, that there was a smart little boy straining to emerge from those flapping, disorganized limbs. Alexander’s program required a platoon of volunteer helpers, which meant most of our block knew all about his condition. The spring after he turned three, when he started to walk up and down the street on his own, his first trips were victory laps to cheering neighbors.

We would have to wait another year for proof that the reading and math exercises were sinking in. Day in and day out, we dutifully held up flash cards containing words and numbers, sentences and equations. But how could we know for sure how much of it was working when Alexander could speak only in fragments and monosyllables? Incontrovertible evidence came one day when we were in the car, about to pull out of a parking lot. Ashley was listing off rhyming words for Alexander to attempt to repeat. “Car,” she recited. Alexander repeated it. Then they ran through far, bar, star.

Ashley paused, thinking the game was over. From the backseat came a thin, cheerful voice: “Guitar!” An unprompted, two-syllable rhyme. Our explosive cheer was so loud, it startled Alexander almost to tears. The kid could talk—and rhyme! Every agonizing day of his therapy had been worth it for that marvelous rhyme.

The kid could talk—and rhyme! Every agonizing day of his therapy had been worth it for that marvelous rhyme.

Alexander recently turned seven, and we no longer have reason to doubt his ability to learn. His daily life is an inventory of things he wasn’t expected to do—possibly ever, certainly not by now. He can tell you his name and address. He’ll ask you to draw a cement truck on his whiteboard, then spell the letters with glee as you write them out. At the grocery store, he counts off the aisles from the signs overhead, calling, “Aisle five!” with particular delight. Then we stand in beloved aisle five to wait for the automated checkout kiosks. “Commpooter!” Alexander announces as I sweep our groceries over the sensor, raising his arms in excitement. Gazing out from beneath a tussle of golden hair, his deep brown eyes are magnetic—they never fail to tease a smile from the checkout attendant.

Last fall, just a year behind schedule, Alexander started kindergarten in a standard classroom. Whatever his limitations are, he is nowhere near them yet. He might never be completely self-sufficient. But I believe if he winds up anywhere near such a state, it will be because, against the advice of many experts, we maximized every moment during his early years, when his brain was most able to reorganize itself to compensate for the tiny missing sliver of gene in every cell. I want Alexander to be seen as a model of how early intervention should be done: all day, every day, as much as a distressed family can possibly cram in, from the moment anyone suspects anything is wrong.

This, I hope, is my son’s lesson for all of us: Our approach to special-needs kids is completely upside down. We’ve only just left the dark ages when it comes to our understanding of how the human brain works. The potential waiting there is an enormous untapped resource. And, as Alexander has proved already, many of the limits we long believed were impossible to overcome fall away in the face of the right kind of hard work.

Originally published in the October 2016 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.

Alexander can walk, talk, swim, jump on a trampoline, and do many of the same activities as other 10-year-olds. At school, he’s working hard to master reading. He goes on field trips, participates in group projects, and played a tree in a school performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNLJ3XCq1lU