Bengaluru: She may be constantly smiling and clowning around, tickling the distressed souls around her, but Sheetal Agarwal is absolutely serious. She is serious, rather obsessed, about her mission to bring joy and happiness in the lives of millions who have been left behind in dark corners of gloomy hospitals, old age homes and orphanages.
A qualified social anthropologist and a trained laughter yoga therapist, Agarwal now wears her new tag and the wig that comes with it, with great aplomb. She calls herself a medical clown and every bit looks the part, successfully helping people find their smile after years of gloom.
“When we go around hospitals or rehab centres, we come across people who have lost all hope in life and and have forgotten to smile. Recently, we visited a hospital in Kashmir and performed our act, the place started to ring with joy. One old gentleman came up to me saying ‘I have laughed like this after 11 long years!’ There is no better feeling than hearing such words,” said Agarwal, Founder of Clownselors, an organisation that combines clowning and counselling as a therapy.
On a mission to help people find peace, the 36-year-old always considered herself a nerd and an introvert, until something drastically changed six years back that set her on a journey of bringing smiles on agonised faces.
“In 2016, I attended a retreat in Ahmedabad where I met a medical clown. I was intrigued because until then I had not heard of a medical clown. So, when I came back to Delhi I researched about medical clowning and got to know about the amazing work they do and the difference they make in people’s lives,” said Agarwal, who has MPhil in social anthropology and worked with an NGO before choosing to make people smile.
The Delhi girl who has now lives in Hissar, Haryana, had always been fascinated by circus clowns and is obsessed with smiling.
“When I read up about medical clowning and saw some videos, I decided to do it. So, I contacted the person I had met in Ahmedabad to find out if there were any groups in Delhi who were into medical clowning. When I couldn’t find anyone, after a bit of hesitation I decided to start on my own. I posted the idea on Facebook and a lot of people showed interest. Soon, I got through the process of getting the permission from the Ministry of Health and started with a group of five volunteers. That’s how Clownselors came into being,” added Agarwal, recalling her early days as a medical clown.
The group’s first event happened at Chacha Nehru Children’s Hospital in Delhi in 2016.
“None of us in the group had any theatre or clowning background and the person who was supposed to come from Bangalore to train us didn’t turn up. But, since we had permission we decided to go ahead. As we entered the hospital, we had dinosaurs running in our bellies. The hospital was crowded and just like any government hospital there were long queues, people were shouting, children were crying and there was the usual rush. But the moment we started our act the atmosphere changed. The children started laughing and all the shouting stopped, we could see the transformation and that made us lose all our apprehension. We went from floor to floor and ward to ward for five hours. It was pure bliss,” said Agarwal, explaining the experience of her first act.
After the act, the former professor said, she had a smile hangover. She just couldn’t stop smiling or waiting for the next Saturday to repeat the act.
“Our initial plan was to do this alternate Saturdays. But, on the Saturdays we wouldn’t do it, we would miss it so much that soon we started doing it every Saturday. Gradually, we expanded our work to old age homes and mental health institutions as well,” added Agarwal, detailing here inspiring journey.
What started with just five people has now transformed into a large scale movement, with more than 500 volunteers now signed up with Clownselors.
Most of the volunteers are either university students or corporate employees trying to find meaning in their free time.
After running the group of volunteers for almost a year, Agarwal quit her job and made spreading smile her full time profession.
She says that her biggest reward is the impact her acts make: “We have instances when doctors or nurses request us to entertain a patient who wouldn’t respond to medicine and that patient would respond to our acts. We would have children waiting for us the whole week. We have had parents crying on our shoulders, parents shedding tears of joy seeing their children happy after a long time. Many patients who were considered hopeless cases, have revived and walked back home. These are the moments we live for. The feeling is just indescribable.”
Despite the incredible impact Agarwal and her group are creating, she doesn’t consider herself a healer.
“We just make patients forget about their pain and suffering momentarily. In many cases we just watch helplessly, patients slipping away gradually, despite the smiles we bring on their faces. In those moments it all seems meaningless. But, then the innocent smiles and tears of joy make us carry on,” adds the miracle worker.
Expansion
Buoyed by the incredible response she has received by doctors, patients, parents and institutions, Agarwal is now spreading her angelic wings beyond Delhi, conducting pilot projects in Mumbai and Kashmir.
“Our Delhi mission is now running on its own, so we are now testing waters in other places. During Covid we conducted a lot of online sessions and connected with people outside our base. We also travelled during the pandemic to neighbouring states of Punjab and Himachal despite restrictions. People were scared and had generally stopped laughing and our work assumed all the more importance,” added Agarwal.
Urging people to laugh irrespective of their situation, Agarwal says that laughter is the best medicine for all illnesses, especially for stress and mental illness.
So, when she is not clowning, Agarwal conducts stress management and laughter therapy sessions in corporate houses and schools, spreading her virus of joy in different sections of the society.
The writer is founder-editor of Thousand Shades of India and a freelance journalist based in Bengaluru.
