Challenge

Challanged

My first cousin, Ganesh is deaf. It is not by birth but it is due to negligence on part of his parents who did not take proper care when he was a young Ganesh and had some infection in his ears due to the colours that went into his ears during the HOLI festival.
Ganesh and I did not spend much time together when we were young and he could hear. Later I went for schooling to mussoorie and he went to delhi to a school for deaf. He had summer holidays and I had winter vacation. Our timing did not match and we did not meet much till he finished his schooling and came to Pithoragarh to degree college.
That was when I was in high school.
During his college days we met more often, initially it was very difficult to converse with him but gradually we developed our own sign language. He did teach me the standard sign language used by deaf but I found my own signs rather easier and we went on to make more of our own personal signs and kept following that, and still do today.
People may call him deaf or the certificate that he has of being deaf and dumb may call him physically handicapped, but I think he has a sharp mind and a lot of sympathy.
He is sharp because he was able to graduate from a normal degree college where normal people also fail but he finished his Bachelor’s degree in three years flat. Though he did fail in a couple of subjects but reasons were different. Once he studied till late and with his door latched from inside no body could wake him up in the morning, he missed the exam to fail and had to appear in that paper again. That was Kumbhkaran Ganesh.
In my day to day interactions with several people, I come across so many people wise and dumb. The rarest of the dodos are also entertained by me because I am a financial advisor and it is my business to serve my investors. By the way do you know what a dodo is. Well for the people who do not know I must mention, dodo – an extinct variety of bird is the national bird of Mauritius. I think they could not fly. They vanished from earth because whenever somebody pointed the gun towards a dodo, I am told, it used to happily run towards the shooter unlike other birds or animals who run away.
Well with so many dumbos and dodos around I feel little bad when people refer to my cousin Ganesh as LATO or TOLYA. I have quite a few times objected to people addressing him with such a name but gradually I realized I could not stop so many people. So today when people talk to like “Gani hya, ati lato thinjyalo kha shungta”, I feel bad. This type of a question coming from an unemployed person makes me feel still worse. I must say, today Ganesh is placed with the North Eastern Railways in a clerk’s position and lives a very respectful life in a official residence.
Can one dare to say “TOTLA” to a lisping guy. “Langda” to a guy without a leg. I think that would be foul language. These days I see that a polio affected person or any such defective body is not called handicapped, he is referred to as a physically challenged or differently abled person, I guess it is because one does not want to hurt the person emotionally, thus a more respectful way of speech.
That is in English, but we do not have such provision in our rung language, a deaf is a LATO, a dodo is a LATO, a dumbo is a LATO, a crazy man is also LATO.
I am happy Ganesh can not hear people address him as a LATO. He only knows he has one of the best brains among us and thinks people respect him for that.
I believe in miracles. Since Ganesh is not naturally deaf, only the fine film over the ear drums was affected thus his hearing ability was impaired. I read somewhere that through artificial scientific drums his lost ability can be reinstated. What if he starts hearing again. How will be feel when he will hear people call him LATO. Oh, didn’t I mention he was very sympathetic, he will not mind. Though he does not hear but he sure does see so many physically challenged people around, who only pose as normal but do have some very serious deficiencies. Well, let us take a look at ways in which we can address these normal people.

Horizontally challenged
Fat

Vertically challenged
Short

Cosmetically different
Ugly

Morally different
Evil

Chronologically gifted
Old

Chemically Inconvenienced
Stoned

Sobriety Deprived
Drunk

Emotionally different
Crazy

Uniquely Co-ordinated
Clumpsy

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