As Vision Gets Blurred & Sound Falls Silent, Touch Their Only Language

Time of India

3 days ago

New Delhi: Rohan doesn't hear alarms. He doesn't see sunlight. But once he's up, his fingers do all the talking. A tap here, a squeeze there — that's how he eats, learns and laughs. Pushpa, too, figures life out one small step at a time.
For every commute, she zooms in on her phone to read the blurry bus numbers she can't hear or clearly see.
Both are deafblind — a condition that affects both hearing and sight to varying degrees. It's like being locked inside a box with no key, no window, no voice calling from outside. But ask them — or better yet, feel your way through their routines — and you'll see how they invent their way forward.
Sense International India, a national organisation, supports individuals with deafblindness through partners across the country.
Shrutilata Singh, network support specialist, Sense India, said, "Deafblindness is a communication barrier, a mobility challenge and a social hurdle, all rolled into one. The notion is the life of those who are deafblind is limited to their fingertips. But what is important is to make the most of what is possible beyond that.
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In Delhi, the National Association for the Blind is a key collaborator. Nandita Saran, principal, Preparatory School for the Blind & Centre for Multiple Disabilities at NAB, said, "Every year at least 60 deafblind city people get in touch with us, 500 have done so in the last two decades.
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But locating them is challenging due to a lack of awareness programmes. We focus on ability, not disability. Every touch, every gesture, every small skill learnt all adds up to a life of meaning.
But yes, there is a need for a census and opportunities for such kids."
As the world marks International Day for Deafblindness on June 27, aptly Helen Keller's birth anniversary, it's time to see how people like Rohan, Pushpa and Rupa are cut off from the world of sound and sight and yet connected through routine, touch and sheer will.
Rohan was born in 2002, premature and fragile. His mother, Padma, remembers watching other babies laugh and respond to voices, while her son didn't. It took seven years of tests, doctors, and confusion before she got the answer: Rohan was completely deaf and blind. "Seven years to understand what was wrong, two more to figure out what to do next," recalled Padma. Her husband slipped into depression. Kin called Rohan a 'burden'.
But Padma kept going, knocking on every school's door. Some said, "Only for blind", others, "Only for deaf". No one knew what to do with a child who was both.
In 2011, NAB finally agreed to admit him. He began to bloom. He couldn't speak, see or hear but he could feel. Through touch, he learned to thread beads and make bracelets. "He may not study like other kids," Padma said, "but his hands are learning. And that's enough. We don't use words but we talk — with our hands and with our hearts."
Pushpa is funny, sharp and always smiling. And funny. Try talking to her with the fan on and she stop you with "I can't hear you." Her disability certificate describes her as 67% disabled. School was a struggle. "I couldn't hear the teacher or see the board. I was always in the dark," she said. Pushpa still completed Class XII and made it to Delhi University. Then the pandemic hit. "Online classes?" she laughed. "I needed someone next to me to speak loudly.
That just wasn't happening."
Job rejections followed. "That's when I really felt left out." But Pushpa didn't fold. She found solace in baking. Today, at NAB, she makes muffins and cookies for the in-house café. "Whatever vision and hearing I have, I squeeze every bit out of it," she smiled.
And Rupa. At 20, she's already lived a dozen lives. When she came to Saksham NGO at 7, she had faint vision and no hearing. By 10, both were gone.
"I can't see anymore," she once sobbed to her teacher. She had fallen off a rooftop and suffered a skull fracture. She slowly adapted to a world of cues. She now recognises people by scent and floor vibrations. "Once," her teacher laughed, "during a test, she figured out I was talking to someone else just from the way the floor vibrated.
That was when she quickly took the textbook and tried to cheat since she remembered the page-wise topics."
Today, Rupa teaches other blind children how to stitch and leads a unit of disabled women in sewing and knitting. She and the others don't live quietly. They live fully — through gestures, vibrations, smells, routines and boundless determination. In a world that values sight and sound, Rohan, Pushpa, and Rupa represent the other kind of intelligence, the one that listens through the skin and speaks through the soul.