Intruder In the Night
Wait, what was that? A dark silhoutte flitted across the terrace. It was about 1.15 am. Krishna had just settled down to sleep. His head was on my arm, growing heavier by the second. His father had already fallen asleep outside in the sitting room. And just beyond, against the deep grey night sky left […]
The Mental Load Nobody Sees
Invisible cognitive load. Chronic vigilance. Decision fatigue. Uncertainty. All wonderful, accurate terms. What do they mean? I shoot upright in an instant. From deep sleep. Zero to 100 kmph in a nanosecond. For a moment I don’t understand why. Is it morning? Night? Where am I? What? Then I hear a soft gurgle. Krishna is […]
Power That Is
“Krishna is on the autism spectrum,” the doctor said. The words hit me like a freight train. Once I got over the shock, I assumed that a year or two of therapy would “set him right.” He might lose a couple of years, but eventually he would find his way back to the familiar, well-trodden […]
And a Life to Live: An Autism Parent’s Journey
We were washing poop sheets for the nth time that night. It was around two in the morning. Exhausted, my husband looked at me. His gaze softened for a moment. “At least I get to go to office,” he said. I paused. We’d come to the point where driving for more than two hours one […]
Building a Village: The Autism Support Ecosystem
The Futures We Imagine When I was seven years old, my father and I would wake at five-thirty in the morning and walk to Nehru Park in Delhi’s Chanakyapuri. The city would still be stretching itself awake, the air sharp with the cool scent of dawn. Appa had decided it was time for me to […]
Autism Therapies: What Exactly Are We Trying To Change?
When Krishna began speech therapy, he had excellent expressive language and poor communication. At the end of one year, he was nonverbal. And I love telling this to people and watching their expressions: Is she for real? OMG, is speech therapy so dangerous? Should I send my child to speech therapy? Perhaps the therapy centre […]
What is Autism?
Why Parents search for answers beneath the spectrum There is a particular kind of archaeology that begins after an autism diagnosis. Parents become historians of tiny forgotten moments. We begin excavating old pregnancies, old prescriptions, old scans, old fevers, old memories that had once dissolved into ordinary life. A bleeding episode at fourteen weeks. An […]
A Friend, Indeed!
The other day, someone spoke about offline friends and online friends—how she connects more deeply with offline ones. Yesterday, I made a brand new online friend. We spoke for the very first time, for more than an hour, something I realised only when it was time for me to pick my son up from therapy. […]
What’s in a Name!
“Baby name?” “Krishnan Srinivasan.” “You’re the mother, Ma’am?” “Yes.” “Your name?” “Gayatri Vathsan.” Pause. Whether the pause was because my surname is different from my son’s, or just unfamiliar, I don’t know. “Vasanthan,” wrote the nurse taking down my son’s case history. “Not Vasanthan, Vath-san,” I pronounced. “Watson,” she wrote. I gently took the pen […]
March in Bloom
March has begun in all its dry, baking heat in Bangalore, the kind that settles early in the day and lingers, pressing gently but persistently against skin and stone alike. Dry leaves drift down in no particular hurry, spinning lazily through the warm air before settling over roads and narrow lanes, forming a soft, uneven […]
Happy Pongal!
Today marks the sun’s northward movement after the winter solstice. Makara Sankranti, celebrated all over India—a time that marks fresh harvests, new beginnings, and a quiet turning inward towards spiritual awakening. At home, it is the one day in the entire year when milk boiling over is not a mistake. It is welcome. Instead of: […]
A Story, Undone
For 20 years, I believed H hated me. I had never met her. Had never spoken to her. And yet, because of circumstances, I believed this completely. And then, in the last week of 2024, I somehow found the courage to visit her. We drove from Bangalore to Chennai, bumping along a highway that seemed […]