Akila Muthukumar

Jan 25, 2024 | villagesquare.in | Akila Muthukumar |Pallavi Srivastava |Saswatik Tripathy |Kartik Chandra Prusty

I wake up at 7am, to the repeated calls for Akila akka (sister). I quickly untuck my mosquito net from under the edges of my mattress, and climb down the rungs of my bunk bed. I’m at Sristi Village, a non-profit organisation located in Konamangalam, a small village in Tamil Nadu. I go outside to greet the energetic youth who live at Sristi – the ones that called out my name to wake me up. Sristi is home to over 50 youth, aged 18 to 35 years. All of them have some kind of intellectual disability.