THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, 6 October 2007 — Former Indian President Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam spent Thursday evening with children with special needs at a center that he had opened seven years ago when he was India’s chief scientific adviser.
Kalam had promised to visit the place when children with special needs from the center had performed at a function at the Rashtrapathi Bhavan in New Delhi a year ago.
“For me they are not mentally retarded but special children with a lot of talents,” Kalam told reporters later.
He spent more than an hour with them at the Freedom Center in the beach resort of Kovalam, run by the Central Institute on Mental Retardation (CIMR). “I have seen how music and dance enrich the brain. I’m sure the Freedom Center will keep growing so that special children get relief. It’s a nice name. The suffering and various problems the special children face should be removed,” he said.
He also handed over to the CIMR a check for Rs100,000, CIMR Director Thomas Felix said. The children played sitar and performed traditional dance.
Kalam had gifted two army horses, Fiarluck and Victor, to the CIMR before he quit as president.
According to Felix, playing with horses helps sharpen the faculties of retarded children.
Four performers, two of them deaf and dumb, performed the dasavataram-ten incarnations of Vishnu — and a typical kuchipudi number, with artistes balancing themselves on bronze plates, with pots on the head.
The quartet played vande mataram on the sitar and the rendition concluded with national anthem sung by the children.
Freedom Center offers a three-year training in performing art to mentally-challenged students completing higher secondary school.
It accommodates 20 students and four teachers. The CIMR has some 200 special children at its centers here and in Kochi.
Kalam also addressed the first batch of students at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology at Vikram Sarabhai Space Center where he had spent two decades as a space scientist.
