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bertina

bertina
lyngdoh , meghalaya

Bertina Lyngdoh (36) sits in front of an open grey laptop placed on a cot. Her eyes are closed and her fingers are on a separate black keyboard placed in front of the laptop. Her long, straight hair is backcombed and tied at the back. She wears a beige full-sleeved sweater above a mauve dress with collar and pink buttons down the front. The wall behind her is sky blue. The laptop rests on a thick folded blanket and many heavy folded blankets have been piled at the foot of the bed.
Bertina sits on a sea-green and white striped sheet on the floor with legs stretched out. The room has sky blue walls. There is a red teddy bear to the left of the sheet. Bertina wears a chocolate brown dress with a round neck and three-fourth sleeves, printed with light brown flowers. A large notebook with Braille lettering on white pages is placed on her lap and she is reading it with the fingers of both hands.
Mid shot of Bertina wearing an emerald green dress with a round neck. She holds up a mobile phone in her right hand, a few inches away from her ear. With the fingers of her left hand she is about to tap the screen. The blue wall behind her has a built-in wooden shelf. Hanging next to the shelf is a framed picture of Jesus Christ. He wears a white robe and a red shawl draped crosswise over the left shoulder. He holds a white lamb in his hands and is surrounded by a flock of white lambs.
Bertina wearing her emerald green dress with full sleeves stands in front of a built-in wall rack with three tiers. The reddish brown wooden shelves are packed with kitchen utensils in steel and plastic. With eyes closed and head turned sideways she is reaching for the bottommost shelf with extended fingers of both hands and feeling a green plastic container. In the sky blue wall to the left of the shelf there is a closed window with six rectangular glass panes and iron frames painted the same brown as the shelves.
Bertina in her green dress is kneeling on a sea-green and white bedsheet in a room with sky blue walls. Next to her is her eight-month old son Iahhel standing upright in a baby walker. The plastic walker has a light grey base and frame topped by a sky blue tray. Bertina is smiling as she places a toy motorbike on the side of the tray. Iaahhel wears bluish black pants and a full-sleeved cream shirt printed with tiny cartoonish figures in black and green. The fine, wispy, wavy hair on his head barely covers his scalp. He is staring round-eyed at his mother. A large red teddy bear lies flat on the bedsheet next to Bertina’s knees.
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“I’m the first Blind person to have completed post-graduation in English from my university”

Persistence is the middle name of our EGS interviewers. Since ‘rural’ and ‘remote’ best describe the locations of many of their subjects, their calls frequently go unanswered. The PwD’s phone might have run out of charge, or lost connectivity, or else they may be travelling or preoccupied for any number of reasons.
 
The interviewer who attempted to connect with 36-year-old Bertina Lyngdoh from Shillong in Meghalaya faced a different roadblock. Bertina, who is blind, was just too busy to talk to her. She was working on her thesis, correcting papers, writing newspaper articles and taking care of her baby, besides. Iahhel (a Biblical name for a guardian angel for the desire for knowledge) was just eight months old when Vicky photographed them. The NGO Barefoot Trust put Vicky in touch with Bertina. Barefoot Trust, founded in Odisha in 2000, has been working intensely in Meghalaya for the past five years.
 
Bertina agreed to send our interviewer text messages to her questions but could only answer two of them before she went completely incommunicado. What we gleaned made us only want to know more and more about this achiever. Here is what she told us about herself:
 
Bertina contracted blindness after a bout of typhoid in her early childhood. The fourth of five siblings, she was orphaned at age four. (She did not reveal how both her parents died and who took care of them afterwards.) We do not know whether she studied in the Jyoti Sroat Inclusive School in Shillong and how she pursued her higher education but we do know that she started teaching in Jyoti Sroat from 2016 to 2017. She was an assistant English teacher for Classes 6 to 12. She had equipped herself with computer skills way back in 2010 when she did a one-year course in computers from the institute run by the National Federation of the Blind in Guwahati, Assam.
 
From 2018 to 2020 Bertina was an English trainer teaching a Spoken English class at the Ajmal Foundation institute. Ajmal Foundation is an NGO established in 2005 in Hojai district, Assam. She is the first Blind person to have completed her Masters in English from North Eastern Hill University in Shillong! Currently pursuing PhD in the English department of the Martin Luther Christian University in Shillong, she writes articles for the local Khasi language newspaper U Nongsain Hima.

Photos:

Vicky Roy

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