After several years I had chanced to meet an old friend at a movie hall in South Calcutta. Monisha and I had gone to watch a Bengali thriller. This friend, Sukanya, was there with her bubbly little daughter who was playing around in the lobby. She had a hearing aid and I soon learnt that she is deaf since birth. My heart was filled with a sudden sadness about my friend and the little innocent child who perhaps did not even know what she did not have. She was very happy with herself and didn't seem to care.
I had earlier worked with Sukanya at a small newspaper house and she was a very nice girl, full of life and a general enthusiasm about everything.
On and off we stayed in touch over phone when one fine afternoon, Sukanya told me she was struggling to find a better school for her daughter. Her daughter would've been in her early teens then and studying in a normal school with normal children (I have quite forgotten the name of the school but it was one of the better known schools in South Calcutta).
They had put her in a normal school because they had read that now inclusive education is being promoted and no child should be denied entry into any particular school on the basis of her disabilities blah blah blah. It went off pretty well in the junior classes but now that she is in a higher class the teachers are becoming impatient with her. She is by no means dull but due to her communication problem she takes time to be explained things. The teachers are not willing to give her that time.
Sukanya was worried that the child is very attached to a few of her friends and leaving the school and those friends might be traumatic for her. I felt so hopelessly incompetent that I could do nothing about the situation and it was all so wrong. I have been a teacher in life and I would've killed such teachers if I found them in my staff room. But here I could do nothing but give her the contact details of an NGO that works with hearing impaired children.
I did not keep track of what was going on in that little girl's life. More out of a feeling of regret and a denial mechanism that perhaps worked in me. If we do not look at a problem in the eye the problem does not exist for us. It was somewhat like that. Meanwhile I learnt the child had left her school and joined another school, which is not the best in the city, but it has a very inclusive culture. She was happy.
And then several years passed. We have been in touch over facebook but never exchanged any notes about the child.
Yesterday Sukanya's facebook post caught my attention. A beautiful porcelain installation artwork on display at an Indo-Russian cultural exchange venue. It's by her daughter Srijoni. She is now an artist. She has done her graduation from NID it seemed. Such a wonderful success in life. I was so happy to learn this. I have not been part of her struggle. But I am happy to see the outcome.
