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“Music brings me joy, and I love movies too. I am very interested in doing Maths”

You would perhaps agree that going to the dentist is not a very pleasant experience. But you cannot imagine the extreme agitation it might cause an autistic child with heightened sensory issues. When getting a simple haircut can be distressing enough (as parents of such children will tell you), strange metallic objects thrust into the mouth and liquids swishing around in it for an hour or more can result in sheer panic.
 
Mohammed Irfan (16) from the Andamans was traumatised by the major dental surgeries he underwent when he was in Class 12, so much so that it affected his studies and upset his emotional balance. His mother narrated how Irfan’s four impacted wisdom teeth required surgeries that turned out to be painful, created infections, and took over a year to heal. He is back in Class 11, preparing for exams, but his mother doesn’t mind that he ‘lost’ a year; her son’s well-being was more important, she told us.
 
Irfan is the only son of Mohammed Hanif (47) and Sweety Ekka (40) who live in Port Blair. Hanif has a government job as a Master in the Department of Shipping Services; Sweety, who did nursing and nursing-advisor courses in Visakhapatnam, worked briefly before marriage but stopped after Irfan was born when she had her hands full with looking after him. From early childhood, he showed signs of speech delay and limited eye contact. He spoke little, if he spoke at all. At age three he was taken to a private doctor and later to Apollo Hospital, Chennai, where doctors identified his developmental disability and advised therapy.
 
Speech therapy is what they concentrated on at first. After returning to Port Blair the parents continued working with him at home through activities and exercises. He studied in Government Senior Secondary School, Delanipur till Grade 9 and completed Grade 10 through open schooling. Between the ages of four and six they took him to Chennai again for therapy, and from the age of eight he went daily to the Composite Regional Centre (CRC) in Port Blair for speech therapy, occupational therapy, special education and other structured activities.
 
Irfan has shown a keen interest in Mathematics. He wanted to take up Science but the practicals were expected to overwhelm him, so in his best interests he was directed towards Commerce, which he is pursuing through open schooling. Speech is still a hurdle and he doesn’t vocalise clearly but he has improved vastly over the years; he speaks a few words at a time and is slowly learning to utter a full sentence. He still doesn’t verbally express pain or discomfort and prefers to gesture and point, leaving his mother to interpret and understand his signals.
 
At home, Irfan independently manages his daily routine and helps his mother with household tasks especially in the kitchen. However, learning each skill took sometimes one year, sometimes two. But once he grasped something he did it well, and with responsibility. Sweety says he is still learning, still growing, every day.
 
Irfan loves music deeply; it soothes him and brings him joy. He enjoys listening to songs on television and singing along to old Hindi classics like “Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas” and “Phoolon Ka Taaron Ka”, although his enunciation may be slightly incoherent. He has a remarkable memory, not just for song lyrics but for cricketing data – he knows players, teams and match details better than most people. He also loves movies, especially those of Hrithik Roshan, Salman Khan, and Shah Rukh Khan, and his all-time favourite is “Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi”.
 
Every small improvement in Irfan’s life required patient repetition over time. Step by step, he learned to communicate, to help himself, to connect with others. “Irfan has shown me that with patience, love, and support, children like him can do wonders,” Sweety says. “I want everyone to understand that if we guide them at every step, these children can achieve anything. It is society’s duty to care for them, include them, and see their potential, not their limitations.”