WHERE THE SILENCE IS SPOKEN AND WORDS ARE EXPERIENCED

By Prasad Paigude

Be thankful to god for providing us with a healthy mind, healthy body, but do we have healthy conversation with others or do we indulge in WhatsApp the whole day? People never understand the joy of listening even though we can hear.

We don’t understand that the word ‘listen’ is made by merely interchanging the positions of the alphabets of the word ‘silent’. But children of Indian Red Cross Society’s School for Hearing Impaired Children, established in 1976 at Red Cross House located on MG Road in Camp, know it very well. These are the children with special abilities trying to express themselves beyond words.

The children here are taught on the same lines as other schools but with a slow pace. Being hearing impaired they take require additional time to get the meaning of words as special sign gestures are used to converse with them. But these little wonders are learning to overcome this hurdle every day. “We learn to speak by hearing sounds. These children are only hearing impaired, otherwise they are perfect. They can speak loud and clear but it is difficult for them to assimilate various sounds and they find it difficult to articulate words. Eventually they learn to speak in a slow pace though”, said Manisha Dongre, a teacher at the school.

These children are not only students but fabulous artists as well. While describing their sharp observation skills, Manisha Dongre said, “These children are very good at perceiving things and can perform various art forms”. These children teach us that absence of one sensory organ cannot stop us from doing whatever we want to do. They paint, dance, perform yoga, prepare beautiful handicrafts, handle computers and almost everything under the sun.

But the challenge faced by most of these children is at home. Their parents or guardians lack patience and avoid developing conversation and thus result in being ignorant towards their wards. Most of these children don’t get required attention from their guardians. The reasons are ignorance, due to poverty, family conflicts.

As per Department of Social Justice and Social Welfare, these students can be enrolled in normal schools provided with special teachers who will explain the lectures to these children. But only that won’t solve the issue as the special teachers don’t work full time. This makes it difficult for the special students to understand new things and express themselves. Absence of special teachers to solve the difficulties culminates in special students lagging behind the class and losing interest in learning. This is the reason behind establishing special schools for hearing impaired children where they can learn and express without any time limit and consequently learning things quickly.

Looking at these children and their abilities, irrespective of what we possess and what we don’t, life is what you make out of it.