New Rakshabandhan film

Lots been happening of late. It's been so busy and hectic around here that I haven't had any time to sit down and blog. Which is a good thing, so not complaining. But among other things, we released a Rakshabandhan film in August in collaboration with Ummeed CDC and HAB Pharmaceuticals & Research Ltd. 

Watch below: 

enLIghtenment 27

 

enLIghtenment 26

 

Aditi writes for Social Samosa on how agencies can become more inclusive

 Click here to read the full piece. 

enLIghtenment 25

 

The four building blocks of change - McKinsey Quarterly

 

enLIghtenment 24 - Amey Pandit

Came across this gem. Not connected to this person, but apt for a lot of us.

Much Much Spectrum on MFA's The Special Needs Children Podcast

So Aditi and I were on the latest episode of Chitra Iyer's podcast. MyFin Ad is a wealth management company, and Chitra is mom to Shravan, who is also autistic. 

Fun hourlong chat. 

Spotify link below - 

Much Much Spectrum on NIMHANS National Strategy on Autism

Another panel that Aditi was part of lately, with some people part of the autism discourse. This inclusion of autistic voices is really beginning to become a reality almost across the board now. 

Much Much Spectrum on Ernst & Young (EY's) Autism Awareness/ Acceptance Month panel

Really liking this new wave of inclusion conversations that are including neurodivergent people, keeping us front and center in conversations about us, and recognizing the vast spectrum. 

Fun chat. 

Much Much Spectrum on CNN News-18's The Breakfast Club

Happy world autism acceptance and awareness day to everyone! 

Consequentiality

The world loves a good underdog story. 

Give them one. 

If you're the underdog, don't fret it. 

You've got a great story in you, in bloom. 

Nurture it. Say your prayers. 

Build, incrementally. 

The days are long but the years are short. 

Where you know what to do - do it. 

Where you don't, wing it. 

You'll win, or you'll learn. 

You'll build, or you'll break. 

Celebrating neurodivergent talent

We released the 2nd film from the Ummeed campaign earlier this week. 

Simply titled, 'Celebrating Neurodivergent talent,' the film chronicled the stories of four ND youths who sing, dance, model and do other cool things. 

It isn't lost on us how much of a big role privilege plays in enabling careers in arts and similar fields. It's pretty much why engineering and STEM are so big in India. 

It's super tough to make it in these fields. Especially without a godfather, a mentor, or someone to pretty much handhold you through your initial years. 

But the film was less about the politics of a career in the arts and more about self-expression and being enabled to showcase your talent, what you're really good at. 

Cuz most of us don't even get those opportunities. 

We express differently, we say different things when expressing differently, and in our expressions, we talk about the divergent ways in which we experience life. 

I get it - it's not for a mass audience. A majority just won't get it. The system aligns way too perfectly with how they think, feel and express for them to feel the need to consider other perspectives. 

And that's ok. Maybe in another life we'll all come back as the same people we now are, and the system will come back as someone totally different who mainstreams us rather than marginalizing us. 

And then the art we create, the dance we do, the songs we sing and everything else we do will be celebrated for its full authenticity. 

Success v failure

Success v failure. 

For a while I've been thinking about what it means to be successful vs a failure. 

Are they binary states of being? Are they black and white, or more a spectrum? Are they mutually exclusive? 

Is a success never a failure? Or vice versa? 

I think it's more a continuous state of mind. Not to say they're not entirely made up constructs, and very, very subjective, both of which they are to a very large extent. 

But also not to say that society doesn't have a very clearly defined set of parameters for what success (and failure) look like. 

In terms of physical appearance, the wealth and property you own, the people you're surrounded by, the respect you get, the followers you have, etc. 

I do believe that, largely, each person defines their own terms for success, and if you tick off those boxes you've set for yourself, you're successful. 

But a large part of it also comes down to making others see that you're successful, na? 

Because what even is success if it doesn't change others' perception of you for the better? If it doesn't make them believe you're the superior being, and - in the larger neurotypical scheme of things - they must listen to you and obey. 

I don't know. 

I have started to think that success and failure are both very ephemeral. 

Like it's a daily thing. Every day you succeed and some things, every day you fail at others. And some things are net no result. 

Like for example if you're up for an award, the day's success or failure builds up until the point that the announcer on stage is going through the nominees list. The moment the name of the winner is announced, if it's you, that's the day's success. And it lasts for the whole 10 minutes that you walk up to the stage, take the award, shake hands, do photos, make your grand speech, and walk off. 

The moment you're doing the walk off, the success - which for those 10 minutes was in a state of limbo, existent but neither really moving towards fading out nor growing - is now slowly fading away. It's already begun to subdue. 

Now the deal is to maintain that success. Because in this world, not being able to maintain a level of success you've reached is also - believe it or not - failure. 

As for me, as a neurodivergent individual, I succeed every day, I fail every day. My parameters are way different than most others because people might find the things that I find difficult very easy, and so my challenges are alien to most neurotypicals. 

So if I manage to finish some work while there's a loud procession passing by outside, or crackers going off, that's a huge win. That's me having achieved the day's success. Or doing a 20-min Headspace session without having a single bugging thought. That's major success. 

Failure would be not being able to tick off everything on my to-do list, or falling behind on a course. Which - again - is something that does happen every other day. 

Of course these are only a couple of the things from my everyday to-do list, but my point here is that success and failure are literally every day occurrences. 

It's like a large horizontal scale with zero in the center, and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 on the right, and the same sequence on the left (no negatives, because success is hardly a negative). 

Say you do three things successfully, and you fail at two. That's a net count of S1. So net net, you saw success that day. Your net count every is what matters, what adds up. 

So of course the larger goal is to be able to see success in every thing every day, and failure in nothing, but until the time I'm human, that's not possible. 

So trying to have a minimum net S1 every day is the goal. Net S1 and  >S1s add up to count to something in the long run. 

Up until the point you're walking off stage with that gleaming, shiny, glittery award. 

Cuz by the time dinner's served that evening, you're already wondering what peak to conquer next. The scale's already been reset to zero, and tomorrow's a shiny, glittery new day to prove yourself all over again. 

Darkinaar in the news

Darkinaar is in the news because the awesome folx at Mid Day did a full feature on Neurodiversity Celebration Week, and recommended our film as a must-watch. 

Big ups to our team and the guys at Ummeed, who are a real pleasure to work with. More of such natural synergies need to happen in the world. 

NV is no more

The saddest thing in the world is for someone who has a family to leave this world like he were all alone. 

Been one of the saddest, most deeply upsetting weeks in years. 

One of our friends - NV - who we met just once earlier this year, was supposed to be featured on our page. 

Both Liz and Aditi were speaking to him throughout Feb, sending him emails and stuff. Helping him figure out what to send, how to send it, etc. Plus he'd been in and out of hospital. 

Wednesday afternoon Aditi last spoke to him. Thursday just before midnight we get a message on one of our groups saying he's passed on. 

Shocked out of her skull Aditi opens her whatsapp to show me his messages, and that's when we see his last status update. It said in plain Hindi, 'from now on, we'll only ever meet in your thoughts. yours, NV.' 

Fucking broke my heart. NV was a good guy. He told me about his condition. Then I read about it, and him, and found out he had had a hard life. His mom died at a young age, and he had to pretty much take care of himself and his brother, which he did for some years selling vegetables in his village. Later he worked as an electrician, but couldn't keep at it because of constant hospitalisation. 

Guy was in too much pain just being alive. 

All his life he had been going in and out of hospital, requiring continuous treatment. He'd sent us a picture of an ulcer on his leg. It looked horribly painful. 

Life is brutal for some disabled folx. And it makes me wonder if storytelling is even of any consequence at all? 

Would NV's destiny have turned out any different had his story gone global? 

Maybe he'd have received the help he needed. But would that mean everyone going through similar things would've got the support they need? 

How many NVs exist in India currently for whom every day is full of pain? How many of those stories can we possibly tell? How many of those stories told get the help, the attention they deserve? How much of that change really ever happens? 

A fraction of a fraction of a fraction. 

Darkinaar - a film on bullying

Worked with the delightful team at Ummeed Child Development Center to put this out. 

A short factual chronicling the bullying experiences of disabled & neurodivergent people. 

Much Much Media shot with Bill Gates

We just shot with Mr Bill Gates. As part of the Gates Foundation's work in social sanitation and agriculture across Odisha and New Delhi.

Was quite a hectic shoot too, with back-to-back days of travel and same-day edits and uploads.

Here's one edit. 

DD murder mystery edition

There's a series of murders.

I'm part of this group of friends who are somehow involved. At one point, the leader of the friend group and us are hanging out together. He takes out a revolver, puts it to the temple of one of the friends sitting there and says 1-2-3 and pulls the trigger.

We're all shocked. Especially me. There's a very strong feeling we're all going to be implicated in the murders.

There's some kind of a party. In it, I feel like they're going to pin the blame on me. There's a small package which has a couple of bullet cases. Someone slips them into my jacket. The whole thing feels like they're all planning to put the blame for the murder on me.

Me, dad and mom go to a funeral where there are a lot of cops. Each time a cop looks at me I think about the murder implication. Once we're done paying our respects, dad gives the guy who murdered this dude 5,000 rupees. Guy accepts it.

I'm on my way up a slope somewhere like the Deonar circle trying to throw away this package. It's dark. I spot some CCTV cameras on the road and keep walking, trying to avoid them. At one point I put my hand in my coat and realise I've already recently done this walk and thrown away the package I have.

On my way back some family friend bumps into me and tells me to come with them to this club nearby. We go, and I see Scott and I'm asking him 'who doesn't know' alluding to the song, and he goes Scotty. Some girl laughs.

The cops everywhere are freaking me out and I'm thinking why the fuck are they not looking into this. Because if they do, they'll implicate all of us in this murder.

enLIghtenment 23 - Alex Pall

 

Purple Fest '24

Got to Goa on Sunday, January 7th for the 2nd edition of the Purple Fest. Aditi had been chosen as the Purple Ambassador for Autism, so we were here for a bunch of panels, meetings and general networking in the space of disability. 

One of the biggest learnings from the festival was that awareness is still a huge issue. We must have sat in about 10 panels across 7 days, and in almost all of them someone or the other brought up a general lack of awareness about disabilities and neurodivergence. 

On the 2nd day Aditi had a talk at the Goa University about the Gen-Z and the future of inclusion. It went really well. She spoke about using social media as a tool for storytelling and self-advocacy, and the importance of building a community around your work. Some of her lived experiences were also shot on the 1st day as part of a campaign called Love All, which a bunch of the other ambassadors were also part of. 

After the panel, someone came up to her and asked if she had had a hard time connecting with her parents as a kid, because apparently that's how all autistic people are. Triggered her quite a bit. 

Among the panels I enjoyed were: 

• Championing Inclusivity featuring folx from Keystone, SoHo Mumbai, and a couple of other other companies 
  
  
• The All-state Commissioner's Meet where Aditi brought up stem cell therapy and bad disability representation 
  
  
• DRR, Gender & Climate featuring Raj Mariwala and Pranav Sethi aka the boy who grew up as an aspie organised by Rising Flame 
  
  
• A couple of NCPEDP panels featuring Amar Jain, Saurabh Prasad, Abhishek Kumar and Dan Van Sant from the Harkins Institute 

Met some old friends, made some new. Finally hung out with Pranav (whom we call Aspie because of his Insta monicker) and hung out lots with Tayzeem from Kashmir, who now lives here. 

Parts of the festival were loud and disorganised, parts of it were informative, and parts of it were just emotional and deeply touching. On the last day, I bumped into Pooja Barot, a deaf tattoo artist from Navi Mumbai. We attended a cultural event featuring deaf children from around the country. Found it to be extremely neurodivergent-friendly. 

The kicker was the fashion show, where Aditi walked with her sensory aids. And Kailash Kher performed at the closing ceremony. 

Among some cool people we met were Praveen Prakash Ambashta, the Dy Chief Commissioner of PwD, central govt, who spoke to us about our work and the scene in general. And, of course, Mr Phal Dessai, Mr Guru Pawaskar and Mr Taha Haaziq, who were instrumental in putting together the festival. 

We discovered this small dive bar called Joseph in the lanes of Fontainhas, where we spent almost 2 evenings having feni and Limca. The other days we were at the Fisherman's Wharf, which was quite bad in terms of alcohol, food and service, and terribly overpriced. 

Aditi and I walked a lot. Daily from the hotel to the venue and back. Bought some kaju one of the days, and took lots of pics overall. 

Nice chill week. 

ChatterFest '23

We did a live series of conversations with some fun, informative folx on all things inclusion. 

Called it ChatterFest, because, well, Much Much. 

Plan to take it live some time soon, and do more than conversations. 

Here's the episodes: