Origami butterflies for autism awareness
Origami made by children kept on display.
sident Medical Administration, Quality And Education, Sankara Eye Foundation India, said, “To increase acceptance of children with autism spectrum and advocate for a comprehensive eye examination which can enhance their ability to flourish, we came up with this idea of showcasing a butterfly through origami.”
ASD not only influences individual behaviour but also has a substantial impact on the visual system.
Through this distinct initiative, participants sought to raise awareness & committed to propagate the importance of understanding and addressing visual challenges faced by individuals on the autism spectrum
The path to the Nobel prize in literature is not paved with prizes of lesser stature, which you have to win before you get the Big One. Yet, with Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos short
listed for the International Booker, it is fair to assume the German author, a personal favourite, is a step closer to the prize everyone has been predicting for her.
The Nobel is given for a body of work and although it is too early in the year, China’s Can Xue is 41 ahead in the bookies’ reckoning. Among those who write in English, Margaret Atwood, Anne Carson, Salman Rushdie and since Bob Dylan won, Paul Simon, have been in the conversation. Kenya’s Ngugi wa Thing’o and Japan’s Haruki Murakami are there too.
Erpenbeck is 57, and, like a Renaissance painter, has the gift of focusing on the foreground and background simultaneously so both appear in sharp focus. Her
The 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature went to Jon Fosse.
characters stand at an angle to history individual wills subsumed by larger events over which they have no control.
When the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz was shortlisted for the International Booker in 2005, there was much excitement in the Erpenbeck household. This was because Jenny’s mother had translated into German almost everything he wrote. Mahfouz didn’t win, but had won the Nobel in 1988.
Erpenbeck’s Kairos is translated by Michael Hoffmann; it is written mainly in the present tense, giving those two words a descriptive edge as the relationship
between a 19yearold and her 53yearold lover begins to crumble against the background of a crumbling East Germany. The book begins with his question: Will you come to my funeral? Four months later, on her birthday, he is dead. Six weeks after that, she receives the boxes that hold the stories of their lives together: “She had only just been born when his first book appeared. He took his first steps under Hitler.”
Inevitably, he plays the role of guru and she the shishya. “It will never be like this again, thinks
Hans. It will always be this way, thinks Katharina.” Erpenbeck points to the essential difference between the two. It can’t last. Life and adulthood take her away from the classroom, bedroom and music room. Awareness is a relationshipkiller.
Few writers combine the personal and the political with the certainty and inevitability that Erpenbeck commands. Fewer still ask the question we ask ourselves frequently: How did an idea that seemed so good at one time disintegrate into something hateful and unmanageable? Both personally and politically?
Kairos is the Greek god of opportunity, depicted with a single lock of hair hanging from his bald head. Kairos moves fast, so if you don’t grab the hair while he whizzes past, you lose the opportunity.
Kairos is about people leaping for the lock of hair, but with no guarantee that what they see as fortune initially is what they really want.
Unexpected things happen, as Erpenbeck demonstrates casually, even when you follow the expected path. Life has to be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards.