Dr Madhumita Puri warns us that once she gets started, she won’t stop talking about her school and her children. And, pleasantly enough, she keeps her word. At first, her enthusiasm might seem a little misplaced considering the debilitating mental disabilities of her wards, but you soon discover that for her they are as capable of changing their destiny as anybody else. “This one’s a little traumatised because his father has recently remarried...it’s something of an ultimate betrayal for him,” she says, ruffling the hair of a young boy who’s trying to make a shopping bag out of an old newspaper using glue. “Deepak was a bit unmanageable when he first came here,” she says of another as she pushes his errant foot off a padded chair. “And Anjali here is one of our student-teachers,” she says, looking towards a young girl who is transferring her weaving skills to Deepak. “I first met Taran when he was just a few months old. And I have literally seen him grow,” she says, pointing towards another teenager...
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