How many of us can complete a 30 piece puzzle, leave alone a 1,000-piece puzzle? Aishwarya Sriram can assemble and put 1,000 pieces into a meaningful whole in a matter of hours. While solving a puzzle, nothing distracts her. She is an autistic adult and her love for puzzles has worked as therapy for her.
Aishwarya was diagnosed with the spectrum disorder when she was two-and-a-half years old. She had lost her speech. Determined to give a sense of direction and meaning to Aishwarya’s life, her parents began to learn everything about autism. Her mother took up a course at the National Institute of Mental Health and then joined Madhuranarayan Centre for Exceptional Children. “Working with special children helped me understand my child’s world,” she says. However, it was at her school — Vijay Human Services — that Aishwarya’s special talent came to light. “Once, at the school, a puzzle box fell off from the rack and the teacher could not put it together again. Aishy was immediately on the job. The teacher told us she had a talent for assembling puzzles,” says Sriram, Aishwarya’s father.
Till date, Aishy has completed 160 puzzles and displayed at 12 exhibitions. Her greatest achievement is completing three 1,000 piece puzzles. Seeing her talent, Vidya Sagar, where she had gone for vocational training in hand embroidery, gave her the first opportunity to display her puzzles and also conduct a live demo. She began to be known to the wider world in 2009, when she conducted an exhibition at the CPR Centre. The event was inaugurated by actor Revathi. Aishy’s puzzling solving ability has been a puzzle for her parents too. They wanted to know how she completed them, by looking at the colour or picture. So they introduced her to Krypt puzzle with no picture or colour. The puzzle consists of 654 pieces, of which no two are alike. They were surprised to find their daughter went only by shapes. At an exhibition in Coimbatore, all her puzzles were sold out.
She also creates images on photoshop which her parents have converted into calendar form. Her mother calls her a perfectionist. “These children only have start up trouble. But when they get going, there is no stopping them. We have a strict schedule for Aishy which we follow everyday. She helps us out with household chores like cutting vegetables,” says her mother.
For the last four years, Aishy has also been maintaining a personal diary, which her parents want to convert into a book. Her latest exhibition was at Defence Officers’ Colony in Nadambakkam. To know more about her visit www.aishyspuzzles.com
