Healing power of music on autistic kids

Chennai: Fourteen-year-old Pranav’s life was a semiconscious nightmare with 50 seizures a day and insomnia due to autism spectrum disorder, till his mother heard about music therapy that promised a whole new meaning to his life. What innumerable pills and countless doctors could not do was achieved by an initiative of renowned Carnatic singer Bombay Jayashri who established the Hitham trust three years ago to heal children with special needs with music.
With just two years of training, Pranav’s doses of medicine have come down and the melody of Krishna Nee Begane is enough to put him to sleep.

Hitham now has over 30 autistic kids who are so full of Carnatic music that you can hear them humming the melodies of classical music while loitering in their homes, park and schools.

“Twenty years ago at a concert, an autistic boy told me that all I sang was wrong and the ragas were not proper. I realised he was right when I heard the concert cassette. It blew me,” said Jayashri.  That concert shock was followed by numerous experiments with her team that finally taught her that autistic kids are very interested in music and that music does wonders with them. Hitham was the result.

Abinaya Senbagaraj, who is one of the first teachers of Hitham, says that music has the power to heal even when medical science fails. “Within a year, we saw reduced levels of anxiety and behavioural change. Children who could not sit still at a place for more than five minutes now attend three-hour concerts,” she said. Samyukta Arun stands testimony to the miracles of music. Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder was the tag given by doctors who advised her mother to accept the fact that the girl could never talk or understand what was happening around her. In despair, she took her child to Hitham following a friend’s advice.
“She would only listen to her gurus at Hitham for barely five minutes before running back home. Then one day I overheard Samyukta, who is non-verbal, fluently sing ayarpadi maligayil. Music can truly heal, even cases damned by medical doctors,” says Sangeetha.

Another star of the trust, Jyothikiran would always stretch out his hand asking the teacher to beat the talam on his hand and put his ears close to the musical instruments to delve into music and go on a journey of rhythm in his imaginary world.