On March 23rd they declared it as a national Lock-down in India, many people freaked out some of them even left the city which had fed them their entire life, some of them pulled their wrists and helped society.

![LockDown Image](https://miro.medium.com/max/700/0*jBgDKoR0AKa5R-_u)

The academic institutions started to teach in online platforms, Now here lies the problem: how can you expect every student to have a stable internet connection and an electronic device to attend moreover the institutions made online classes mandatory to attend them. (This is a talk for another time)

Now I want to talk about the problems faced by Deaf people

How can a deaf student listen to the online classes where they themselves can’t understand the lectures in offline classes?

Deaf students face many problems in listening in the class because they should pay attention to the lip of the professor to read lip

After all you might think several students wear glasses and need no further assistance same happens with deaf students, But hearing loss is more complicated than that.

### I want to clear up some common misconceptions about the Hearing-Aid

This is really a common mis-understanding that hearing aids are just like Glassses, that they enable the person to attain 100% clear vision.

**NO a Big No!!!**

Hearing aids just amplify the the sound received, doesn’t improve the clarity of the sound.

A person might still struggle to understand others even when wearing the Hearing aids, They struggle more now with the masks on (Covid-19) because the person sees the lip movement and try to hear at the same time.

I will explain why a Deaf Person trys to read the Lip:

Imagine that You are Deaf now, You don’t know how a couple words are pronounced, ex: mississippi (classic permutation problem xD)

I will try to speak mississippi to you with the mask on , The Persons hearing aid catch it as misipi, this seems like a new word to you, You Fail to understand what is this word, But when you try to read the lip and listen to the word you might understand it clearly.

We can understand some of the common words like, appa, uta, college, computer, why ?

Because these are the words which we speak Daily, Basically mind is just like Machine Learning, It constantly learns itself by how this word is pronounced, etc…

Listening is a tough task. Hearing loss makes it extremely difficult to hear some speech sounds. Speech sounds are lost in greater numbers as hearing loss is more. Your brain has to constantly understand what someone is saying when you can’t hear particular words/sounds. To interpret what originally sounds like gibberish into recognizable speech, your brain must mentally fill in the blanks, adding missing speech sounds and guessing at unheard words. This requires a high level of focus on the part of the listener. This level of focus exhausts mental resources quickly, leaving the listener exhausted. When all of their mental energy is focused toward grasping what is being said, there are few resources left to truly retain what is being said. As a result, the person may/may not understand what he or she had been telling.

Also we cannot neglet background noises; Hell , A normal person can’t even hear properly in noisy background.Background noise can amplify the struggle to hear.

Lipreading requires a significant amount of mental effort and concentration. People who are deaf or hard of hearing do not instinctively know how to lipread, which is actually a popular belief. It’s an acquired skill that takes years to perfect. Lipreading may be more challenging for people who lost their hearing later in life compared to those who have been deaf or hard of hearing since childhood. Because of the speaker, lipreading can be difficult or impossible. Lips can be difficult to read if you have facial hair. When a speaker makes exaggerated lip movements or doesn’t move their mouth much when speaking, it can be difficult to read their lips. Many sounds are also made in the back of the throat and are not visible on the lips. Lipreading is only possible for 30–45 percent of voice sounds. via (<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lip-reading-is-no-simple-task_b_9526300>)

Combine all of the above problems with writing notes, it seems like it is a impossible job.

In India the Sign Language is considered as a Taboo, what the people don’t understand is it is a way of expressing the feelings by a person, The people talk like it is a disgrace to the humanity, which hurts the Feelings.

When I planned to write this, I decided do some research, I was shocked to learn that only around two percent of deaf children in India attend school, further perpetuating a culture of illiteracy and low economic opportunity.

Despite a massive audience in India, closed-captioning on television has lagged. Adult lack of education has delayed efforts to extend these services to the wider population, in addition to the lack of investment in technology.

**I tried to give a small insight to the Problems faced by the Deaf Person**, there are so many other un-parallel problems which cannot by penned down. Now enough about problems, Lets look at some of the People who have tried to overcome the challenges,

- Shruthi
  
  Shruthi is originally from Shivamogga, Karnataka. She had severe to profound hearing loss in both ears and was fitted with hearing aids. She shifted to Mysore and joined the school run by the Parent’s Association of Deaf children (PADC) after hearing news about the school from her grandfather when she was aged about 2.5 years. Initially, she was trained in her mother tongue Kannada for 3 years in the school. Thereafter she got admitted to 1st standard in a regular mainstream school and studied in Kannada medium till 7th standard and later changed the medium of instruction to English. She excelled in her studies and was able to secure a good rank in CET and got admitted to engineering in SJCE Mysore in Electronics and Communication. She eventually graduated from SJCE (8.98 credit points) and got selected to Wipro in a campus interview. Currently, she is working in Wipro Technologies, Bengaluru as a Senior Software Engineer

- Kavitha
  
  Kavitha has severe loss in the right ear and profound loss in the left ear. She was fitted with bilateral hearing aids. Kavitha joined a preschool run by the Parent’s Association of Deaf Children, Mysore at the age of three and a half years. She underwent intensive training in the Preschool for 3 years. Subsequently she joined regular school in Mysore. She studied in Kannada medium till 4th Standard and later changed her medium of instruction to English. She completed her SSLC with distinction by scoring 80% marks. Later she joined a Polytechnic and completed her Diploma in Computer Science with distinction. Also she did her BCA through Distance education from Karnataka State Open University, Mysore. During her school and college days she had participated in various competitions and had bagged many prizes. At present she is working in WIPRO, Bangalore as a Software Engineer. She is married and has a one year old daughter. Even with many obstacles Kavitha was able to overcome them and came out with flying colors.

- Mahanth Bagi

  Mahanth hails from Belagavi, Karnataka. He was diagnosed with Severe to Profound hearing loss in both the ears and was fitted with hearing aids when he was 3 years of age. Initially he received pre-school training in his mother tongue Kannada for 3 years. Later he was trained in English. After successfully completing his preschool training he studied in a regular school in Belagavi. He cleared his SSLC and PUC examinations with distinction from a regular school and college. He took up the CET entrance examination conducted by the CET Board of Karnataka and came out successful. At present he is studying in 2nd Year MBBS in Mysore Medical College, Mysore

_there are so many people, I will try to post a collection of 3–5 people in comming articles._

Also a important point that I want to point out is each persons learning experience is different
> “Just because you’ve met one deaf person , doesn’t mean you’ve met any deaf person. You cannot generalize anyone and their experiences.”

Also if you are free read [this](https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/virtual-deaf-and-hard-of-hearing-education-f78e31c98f00).

So long….


The Problem which no one Overlooks


Today I went to eat Davanagere Benne Dose, As it had been a long time, I ate Benne. Dose and the weather was appetizing to eat a hot burnt crispy Dose.

I took my Activa and went to my regular Dvg-Benne- Dose, I know the taste of Original Davanagere Benne. Dose is irreplaceable in Bengaluru. But this. Dose’s taste was the closest to the Original Davangere Benne. Dose.

But now, I am not talking about the taste Comparison, It is a Talk for another time.

To give you a small description about the hotel, It is almost 5 ft Wide and is around 25ft long, Basically a small Hotel. It is being run by a couple from North Karnataka. They have 2 children as well.

When I was devouring the scrumptious Benne Dose, I observed that slippers of the owners were placed outside, I asked them why ? This is what they told me,

```
Sir, Naavu ond hattu (10) varsha aytu Bengaluruige bandu,naanu matte nam maneyavaru bandvi,Bandaga naan hattira bari 1000 maatra ittu, naanu yeneno kelsa maadi swlpa duddu save maadi ee hotel na sumaru 5–6 years back open madideve, Ivattu nan makkalu Olle Schoolge hogta idare,nan hatira ond hosa gaadi ide, Idella ide hotelinda agiddu sir, Naavu dina ee hotel ge pooje madtivi, Devasthanakke Chappali hakond ollege hogbardu anta heltare alva, namge ide devasthana,Uta mane, batte yella kottide
```

### Translation
```
Sir, It has been around 10 years, Since we came to Bengaluru.When me and my wife came here I had only 1000 rupees in my hand, I worked some odd jobs and saved enough money to open this hotel back in 5–6 years, Since then my life has been going good, My children are studying in a Good School, I was able to purchase a new vehicle.
It is a proverb saying that We musn’t wear Footwears inside the temple, For us this hotel is the temple, It has given us Food, Home to live, Clothes to wear. We respect the hotel as much as we can..
```
I was awestruck listening, WOW they have somuch respect to a building.

We Indians worship even small thing if we belive enough in them.

It’s so beautiful to observe such small things in our lives.

> God’s supreme word to us is life; our highest worship of Him is love for the living.
>-Anonymous


The Respect !!!


**F\*\*\*** this Covid, I thought to myself, having cursed the pandemic countless times. This time wasn’t that much different. If it wasn’t for the pandemic, I would have had a blissful college life. After finishing my CIE-3, I was thinking of writing the improvement CIE, I sat in my room looking over my “to-do list” which comprised Experiential Learning-Phase 2, English Essay, and lastly CAED submission. I glanced over the deadlines, the English one was due tomorrow so I started to write it. The deeper I went to writing, the more lost I was.

I kept thinking about this cursed pandemic. Well, I’m not the only person who is facing difficulties. Many people are facing problems, and if we look from the perspective of those people, we would feel lucky for not having those problems.

Have you ever seen a child staring at an empty glass cup imagining that his dad would pick him now and play with him? But unfortunately, as he was a COVID-19 ambulance driver he had worked intensely during the lockdown, but The Covid-19 didn’t leave him too, he was affected by the virus and he died.

![covid_croud](https://miro.medium.com/max/700/0*yLsSgVnuYumLZcrV)

Can you imagine that child’s pain, sorrow, the devastating look in his eyes, the cold hand waiting to be warmed by hugging someone close to him but there is no one, not even his mother, he had lost his mother because of premature birth now the only thing he used to hug was also disappeared.

As cold as this sounds, he might be one of the luckiest ones to be born during this era where people have a shot of living even if they get sick. We have been through a countless number of wars because of some trivial misunderstanding and someone’s ego not being able to take that. As clumsy as this sounds, we are still here at this moment. That’s why my favourite quote is “Yesterday was the past, Tomorrow is the future, But today, My friend is the present! That’s why today is called a gift”

You are still here, you shouldn’t exist. Yet you are, so let me say it clearly without a doubt, you are a miracle.

A wise man once said, 
> “Our daily lives we spend like this, might just be a series of miracles.” Our existence is so obvious that we take them for granted. That doesn’t change the fact that we shouldn’t be existing right now… it’d take the faintest miracle to be here.”

While imagining these I was suddenly questioning myself, _Why do I exist?_

Well, I’m still looking for an answer.

Shit! My English essay submission is tomorrow I gotta go bye 👋

Hope Y’all had a pleasant read.


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