This was an experience. I saw the email invite in my inbox and it got me curious. So, I went and it was fun - the introduction, the courtship, everything. But what lurked beneath was fear of the unknown and of the future.
The marriages seemed to be working. After all they came from the same worlds, they spoke the same language of silence.
An edited version was published in the Real Page 3 section of the Indian Express on May 16, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, April 30, 2010
No word. No sound.
They mostly communicated in silence about their expectations, of love they were trying to find. She followed closely how his hands rose and fell, how his fingers clasped, unfolded, wound again, how his lips twitched as he tried to tell her what books he read or what time he goes to work. Before she said yes to Yogesh, Babal Kumari, a 25-year-old deaf and dumb girl, needed to know more about him.
He went through the motions again, adding more to his profile, hoping she would say yes to him. She knew how to decode. Outside the large hall where dozens of parents of deaf and dumb women and men congregated to participate in the Pranay Milan Sammelan, an annual event to facilitate matrimonial prospects for the hearing impaired, at the Sacred Heart Cathedral she met him first. Her brother-in-law and his father had approached each other before after Yogesh went up on the stage and communicated the family wanted a Rajput girl.
But Babal left unimpressed. The boy followed. Of the women who had come seeking an alliance, he had already set his heart upon Babal.
So, they met again. A friend facilitated the meeting. She stood and watched, listened through his hands and eyes what he had to say and excused herself and walked up to the front row to sit. She flipped through the file with the photos and the information on the men and then looked up at the stage where more men were still advertising themselves.
In its 18 th year, the Pranay Sammelan, organized by the Delhi Foundation for Deaf Women that was established in 1973 to help deaf women get education and vocational training, has gained popularity among the parents of deaf and dumb children who flock to the event to seek a groom or a bride because the deaf and the dumb have their own community, and their own language and it’s only within the like that they stray, express, love and hate.
When a utensil fell on the ground with a loud thud and Pooja didn’t look up, Brijendra Singh knew something was wrong. He took her to a doctor, and then did the rounds of hospitals in Agra where they lived and in Delhi, too, but the doctors said this was incurable. His daughter was deaf. She could speak, though. But in her world there was only silence. How would she then imitate the sounds she heard? There was no reference. Her lips moved but the sounds that came out didn’t conform to any language. She spoke her own tongue and only her mother seemed to understand.
Pooja learned the sign language so she could communicate. She also learned speech therapy in Agra and learned to say her name.
“It is difficult. It takes months to teach one word,” Brijendra Singh said.
When she was 23, he brought her to Delhi last May to participate in the Pranay Sammelan. She looked her best and the parents proudly walked up to the stage and talked about their only daughter.
A match was found the same day. A family from Agra was looking for a bride for their son who works in Hero Honda group. They liked the slight, coy girl.
On February 7 this year, the marriage was solemnized in a grand function at Agra. Renu, the girl’s mother, said when Pooja walked on to the revolving stage, she looked resplendent. She had never seen her so happy.
Pooja came along with her husband Santosh to the event on Friday. They shared their stories with others.
Pooja who is a trained beautician now lives with her husband in Gurgaon. They have evolved their own way of communicating while he is away at work.
A few minutes before he gets home, he sends her a text message and she comes down and opens the door. Little adjustments but they understand each other and they complement each other, Renu said.
Standing with her husband, Pooja spread her hands to include her mother-in-law, her parents and her husband and then clasped them to say they were all happy together.
“On her wedding a lot of their deaf and dumb friends had come. It was fun. They talked so fast we couldn’t keep track,” her father said.
Sometimes, the father becomes sad that there are so many things that have remained unspoken between the two of them. In their limited world of communication without words, he often wonders the boundless conversations the father and the daughter could have had it not been for the sound of silence that filled her ears and the words hat filled his mind.
But over the years, as he watched her grow up, he became part insider of her world.
“They have no pretensions. They have a lot of trust and faith,” he said. “Their world is simple. She tells me it is better this way. She doesn’t get to hear the bad things that go on in the world.”
In 1991, the Delhi Foundation of Deaf Women started hosting the event to facilitate matrimonials between the hearing-impaired. For years, they had filled in a crucial gap by providing vocational training but when they saw the families express anxiety about their future, and the girls’ themselves indicating how they needed a companion, they decided to help them find a match.
Rajlakshmi Rao, the president of DFDW, said the marriages survive because expectations are low.
“They learn to be grateful all their lives. They have a lot more empathy. All they want is a companion who can understand who they are,” she said.
The DFDW circulates the testimonials, including the salary and qualifications of the boys and the girls, and their profiles, and helps parents interact with each other.
Four years ago, www.shadi.com , the world’s largest matrimonial website partnered with the organization to help the cause. So, they have been sponsoring the events such as Friday’s and also offering to upload their profiles on their website for free.
Almost 5 percent cases on shadi.com are special cases, Neelesh Borgharkar, the national sales head for the website, said.
“This is just helping them to widen the platform,” he said.
For years, the organization has relied on word of mouth to get the parents to come to the event. SB Kumar and Durga Devi had heard about the event from a friend in Patna. Last year, they had attended a similar event in Varanasi to look for a match for their daughter Pragya Anand, who is pursuing her bachelor’s in sociology through distance learning.
“We weren’t lucky,” the father said.
Most of the men and women who came Friday had either left studies after high school or had pursued further education through distance education. Pragya's father said it would have been nice if the government opened more colleges and gave more opportunities to the deaf and dumb who are bright but only can't speak or hear. Pragya plays chess at the national level and is good in studies but has only limited options. It's difficult in college because many institutes of higher learning don't have special educators, he said.
On Friday, he had already short listed a few profiles in the file they had been handed. Pragya, 28, is not ready to marry yet but for parents, it's time she did.
“She doesn’t understand. What will happen to her when we are dead?”, the mother said.
The daughter and the mother learned to leave behind the luxuries of the language years ago. But they speak through the nights about their fears and longings. Where sound fails, eyes and hands take over. Emotions were never a prisoner of words, Durga Devi said.
But now, it is time their daughter found a man.
“We have come with a lot of hope. Let’s see if we can find someone for her,” the father said.
While the parents spoke about their concerns and reservations, Pragya and Rizwana were quietly watching Babal Kumari and Yogesh strike up a conversation. They hadn’t found their own suitors yet.
Raish Ahmed said he wasn’t able to find any Muslim grooms at the event. Rizwana, who has completed her high school and is well-versed in household chores, is already 25. the Pranay Sammelan was his biggest chance. Perhaps if they advertised better, more Muslim families would come.
“They don’t know. Many of us don’t know about this,” he said. “It’s so much better to come and find someone who belongs to the same world.”
Surabhi (name changed) would give it a second chance. She had been married once. But it ended in divorce because both of them didn’t speak the language of silence and signs. The man wasn’t deaf and dumb. After a while, it ended, her mother said.
“Those kinds of marriages don’t last. There’s nothing to speak after a point,” she said.
A few men showed interest. They were keeping their fingers crossed.
Up on the stage, men and women wearing numbers to identify them paraded in front of the audience.
Other voiceless pairs cheered on. What had never been told in a language or ornamented with words, shone through the eyes without the pomp of speech. They wanted to break the silence with a companion and that’s what brought them here.
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