Rahul had been diagnosed with autism, which his parents felt set him apart from other children and I was hired as his private tutor, living in the family. Tutors from England had sent me to India on this assignment. I had tutored other autistic children in the past and was well used to tutoring them. 

It was clear from the start that Rahul was a charming, intelligent boy, but he was clearly autistic. 

Fortunately we got on very well from the start; he was fun, willing to learn and helpful. I managed to persuade him that there are advantages to being autistic and that he should concentrate on benefitting from them. Many computer programmers are autistic – for a very good reason: they have to be perfectionists; one misplaced punctuation mark will ruin a line of code. And autistics have obsessive interests, which makes them very good computer programmers. 

Rather than seeing autism as a disadvantage, I taught Rahul to see it as an advantage; he had abilities that non-autistic people do not have. Einstein was autistic and didn’t start speaking until he was 4; Wittgenstein was also autistic – he didn’t start speaking until he was 5. They didn’t do too badly in life. 

I did not try to cure Rahul’s autism; I taught him to take advantage of the very real benefits that autism gives a child and to capitalize on them. Every autistic child has abilities that non-autistic children do not have. The key is to find out what qualities each autistic child has that he can capitalize on. 

Rahul was obsessive about maths, a very useful quality to have if one wants to be a mathematician, which Rahul did, and we spent hours on complicated mathematics. It was a pleasure to see how meticulously he attacked the complicated problems that I set him. In fact he is a very good mathematician and I am sure will go far in that profession. 

When I arrived to stay with the family Rahul was treated differently from the other children, as if he had something ‘wrong’ with him. Slowly I came to persuade him that there was nothing wrong with him, rather that he simply had abilities that other children do not have. I gave Rahul self-confidence that it was a pleasure for me to see. 

PS Rahul is now doing very well as a computer programmer. LN