For the students of Kamala Mehta School for the Blind, 9 am on Wednesdays and Fridays is Mallakhamb time. Twenty-four girls at the Dadar school walk to the second floor gymnasium to learn the art from Mumbai’s renowned instructor Uday Deshpande.

Upside down: Rope Mallakhamb is now a source of strength for the students at Kamala Mehta School for the Blind

Balance and determination
While sighted individuals are shown a demonstration of the Mallakhamb exercise, visually-challenged people need to be verbally explained in detail, the technicalities of Mallakhamb. Deshpande says, “When I first started teaching visually-challenged children back in 1992, I was a little apprehensive as I needed to verbalise all the instruction. But one thing that I realised as I started coaching them was that they were not afraid. Sighted people tend to get jitters seeing the eight feet rope but these students do not. They cannot see and so the fear of being suspended from a height is something they do not comprehend, so teaching them becomes much easier.”