Abhimanyu, Our Son

It is this smile that has kept us going all these years.

- Madhusudan Srinivas

This is a small story, a look-in through a tiny window at our life. It’s about our son Abhimanyu, his autism and us. But we have to tell you that it isn’t the full story, there’s a lot more to it.

Abhimanyu is 23, about five feet eleven inches tall. He lives with us, his parents, both journalists, in New Delhi. He is taller than both of us, towering over us like a ‘gentle giant’, as one of his teachers calls him.

I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I say everyone loves him. He is, and has always been, a cheery, happy fellow, with a grin plastered across his face. He smiles thus, whatever the circumstances—it could be an inability to understand what’s going on around him, an inability to speak full sentences, or extreme sensory distress, which makes him clap or screech loudly in public.

It is this smile that has kept us going all these years.

It kept us going in the face of extreme distress, on his part, when he would cry for hours together, or have a tantrum, while we tried desperately to understand what was going on with him—the crying was so intense sometimes that the only way to soothe him was to pull him into the car and drive for hours around the city.

And It Kept Me Going

In the face of crippling embarrassment when I would take him out and he would ‘behave oddly’: How many children of 10 or 11 do you see flapping their arms and screeching and rocking? How many young adults do you see with a wet patch on their crotch?