“Unconditional love for my students and total acceptance. That is what I have learned as a teacher!”
Medha Tengshe offers her point, gently but firmly. A special educator, she is one of the founding members of Sadhana Village where over 30 people of varying ages and with varying levels of intellectual abilities are taught basic life skills along with some art, music and dance.
Sadhana Village is located in Mulshi block of Pune district. A residential institution for adults with intellectual disabilities, here students are referred to as ‘special friends’ and Medha tai, a journalist by training, defines her role as that of a gruh mata (house mother) to the 10 residents as, “a mother who is also a teacher.”
A feeling that Satyabhama Alhat, a special teacher at the Dhayari School for the Hearing Impaired in Pune agrees with. “A teacher at a residential school like ours is also a parent and we do not want our children to miss home,” she tells PARI as she turns to teach some girls how to play phugadi, a traditional game as it was Nag Panchami, a festival celebrated on the fifth day of Shravan. Dhayari is a primary school with 40 resident students and 12-day scholars who come from parts of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Delhi, West Bengal and Rajasthan among other places.































