EnAble India - Some more...

This was the most difficult of lot. We encountered a candidate who was dumb and deaf. Now, how do we communicate?! It was as if someone is mocking at us and asking, “Kyon! Chakkar kha gaye na??” now even Deepti started looking at me in dismay. She was clueless. I thought, “Ab mujhe hi kuch karna padega” I made that candidate comfortable and gave him the form so that he could fill it with a hope he would understand it and would do the needful. He zipped through the form top to bottom thrice and asked us in his sign language “What the hell is this?” we were like “Hey Bhagvaan!” we had understood now this was a nut that needed some brilliance to crack. Luckily, we saw him conversing with a guy nearby in the sign language. We went to the gentleman who was talking to him. Technically, he was deaf (minor version of it) but could hear, after using a hearing aid and knew English as well. He was a life saver for us. We started talking to him and made him cognizant of our problem. He immediately started the conversation with our candidate in the “divine” sign language and in no time we were through. We had filled the form. Yippee!!! We then sent the candidate with the filled form for further processing of his case. But what we did after that was to learn from the gentleman to talk in sign language.

Here's some gyaan on sign language:

He told us that every area/city had its own sign language. But somehow signs were similar and if we could grab some of them then that it would be perfect for our job. Seeing that we were keen to learn the art, he should us some signs. For e.g., to ask for the name, stretch the thumb and the index finger of your left arm to make a shape of L and with the index finger of right arm, just rub that L. This meant we were trying to know the name of the person. And if we had to ask him his address, with 2 hands make a picture of home; that was easy. And to ask his education, with the right palm rub your forehead. Yes, this is because education is always related to your future and future is depicted with your forehead. Interesting, isn't it?!