Guddu bent over the vase in front of her, her eyes fixed on its surface. Around her, the room moved with colour, sound and activity — brushes being passed around, clay being shaped, fabric being sorted, voices rising and falling. But Guddu stayed with her work.

Slowly, patiently, she moved the brush across the vase she had created. There was no hurry in her hand, no need to explain what she was making. The act itself seemed to hold her attention completely.

For many days before this, Guddu had stayed at the edges of the room. She did not meet anyone’s gaze, did not speak much, did not reach out. She watched the others from a distance, present but apart. Then, with gentle encouragement and without pressure, she stepped closer one day and picked up a brush.

Guddu was one of 15 women with intellectual disabilities who participated in What Is Love?, a five-month-long art and healing initiative led by the Society for Child Development. Through ceramics, textiles and painting, the women were given space to explore emotion, memory and identity.

For Madhumita Puri, founder of Society for Child Development, the experience began with a simple idea about selfhood.

“Love begins with knowing who you are, and then accepting that self,” she says.

“With this project, we went in not assuming anything. It was not just a discovery for the women; it was a discovery of them by us as well.”

Guiding the women through these months were artists Suparna Arora in ceramics, Shalini Dutt in textiles, and Sujata Das in painting. Rather than beginning with a fixed idea of what the women should create, they brought clay, fabric and colour into the room and allowed the process to take shape around each participant. 

The women live in a government-run shelter for women with intellectual disabilities, many of whom have been abandoned by their families. 

The facility, Madhumita says, is clean, spacious and well-run. But care cannot end with infrastructure. There are inner worlds too — memories, longings, anger, joy, ownership, affection that often remain unseen.

“These are people who are often seen as charity cases,” Madhumita says. 

“But there is so much more to them than what is visible on the surface. There are thoughts, feelings, opinions, all buried under distress.”

15 women, 3 artists & 5 months of making Art 

For Madhumita, who has worked in the disability space for over three decades, the idea came from a growing discomfort with conventional approaches.

“I felt we had to go beyond trying to fit round pegs into square holes,” she says.

Instead of having the process led by an educator, administrator or psychologist, she wanted artists to enter the space — people who could guide the women not through correction or expectation, but through creative engagement.

The name,........

© The Better India