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ferdinand

ferdinand
lyngdoh
marshillong , meghalaya

Mid shot of Ferdinand Lyngdoh Marshillong (36) in a red T-shirt against a background of bushes with small green leaves. He wears specs with black rectangular frames and he has short curly black hair and a wispy beard under his chin. His left hand is by his side and he has lifted his right hand with palm spread out and fingers splayed. He has just tossed up a sky blue and white football which hovers a few inches above his palm and almost touches his right shoulder.
It is dusk and Ferdinand sits behind the driving wheel of a white Maruti Suzuki car. The car’s headlights gleam a pale orange. The car sits on a concrete driveway leading up to a house. To the left, along the driveway there is a row of green plants with yellow flowers. The single-storeyed bungalow is painted pista green with glass-paned windows in white wooden frames and a sloping roof of dark green corrugated metal sheets. Behind the bungalow in the same compound is a three-storeyed building with light green walls.
Side view of Ferdinand sitting in a black computer chair behind a table, looking into an open laptop with his hands on the keypad. He wears black shorts and a turquoise blue shirt in a plaid pattern of thin white chequered lines. The room has pista green walls. On the facing wall is a drawn window curtain of thin white transparent material. Behind the laptop on the table there is a large black Canon inkjet printer with white foolscap sheets of paper stacked in the upright tray. On the wall behind the printer is a large rectangular painting on canvas. It shows a portrait of a man wearing white-framed specs and a greenish black shirt on a burnt-orange background.
Mid shot of Ferdinand standing in the kitchen in front of a gas stove. He wears a full-sleeved purplish-black cotton shirt with a round neck. His left hand, encased in a large red pot-holder in a thick, padded material, holds the side of a round-bottomed steel vessel. He holds a steel ladle in his right hand. He has just finished dipping the ladle into the vessel because from the ladle, a thin stream of reddish brown liquid pours into the vessel. The kitchen has pista green walls. To the left there is a narrow wooden kitchen top with wooden cabinets beneath it, all painted the same colour as the walls.
Ferdinand and his wife Veronica Nonglait (38) sit on a tan-coloured double sofa made of woven cane, with their son Ethan (4) between them. The room has a brown wooden floor and ivory walls. To the left of the sofa there is a toy jeep big enough for a child to sit in, with a biscuit-coloured body and wide black tyres. In front of the sofa there is a side table made of woven bamboo cane. It is covered with small yellow toy construction vehicles such as trucks, forklifts, cranes and excavators. Ferdinand, wearing navy blue stretchable pants and a red half-sleeved knitted shirt with collar, is laughing as he turns towards Ethan, holding a tiny yellow toy truck in his right hand. Ethan laughs as he grasps the truck with both hands. He wears grey stretchable knitted pants and a full-sleeved knitted shirt with red sleeves and a brown front. Veronica is grinning as she looks towards Ferdinand. She wears black pants and a maroon kurta with a round neck, three-fourth sleeves and blue and white embroidery on the chest.
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“I’m doing research on sign language. I want to start an NGO someday”

As a child, Ferdinand Lyngdoh Marshillong (36) from Meghalaya wanted to be a priest. “I used to teach singing to the youth choir,” he says. “But after I acquired deafness a priest from a seminary centre told me I would not be able to become a priest. He said as a priest you would have to hear people’s confession, wouldn’t you?”
 
If Ferdinand hadn’t started gradually losing his hearing after being hit, at age 10, by a bike rider negotiating a blind curve, he might have been celibate. And he wouldn’t have met Veronica Nonglait (38) or been blessed with their son Ethan (4). Speaking to EGS with Veronica interpreting our questions, Ferdinand told us, “My happiest day was when my son was born. My next-happiest was my wedding day!”
 
The eldest of eight siblings, Ferdinand belongs to Mawkyrwat village in South West Khasi Hills. “After the accident, I did not fully understand the effect it would have on my life,” says Ferdinand. “But when I was in Class 10, one day I realised I couldn’t understand what the teachers were saying.” They thought he was being mischievous when he didn’t respond to them and they would punish him. Later his friends explained to them that he was unable to hear them (he has 100% deafness in one ear and 80% in the other). Ferdinand was so disheartened he wanted to quit studying but his teachers motivated and guided him, tutoring him one-on-one after class. He says he owes a lot to the teachers of Nativity Higher Secondary School for not giving up on him and for not letting him give up either.
 
Besides being proficient in sign language, Ferdinand is an excellent lip-reader. However, it was mainly through notes shared by teachers and classmates that he was able to study in college. He graduated with honours in Khasi language from Sngap Syiem College in Mawkyrwat. He met Veronica when they were special education teachers at Bethany Society, a registered charity in Shillong that supports Persons with Disabilities (PwD), works for inclusion, and promotes sustainability. The Society runs the Jyoti Sroat Inclusive School and Ferdinand was teaching children with visual and hearing impairments when Veronica joined Bethany in 2015.
 
Trained to teach visually impaired children, Veronica also started learning Sign from a friend. One day she was sitting in a teashop with members of the Deaf community when Ferdinand entered, and saw her signing. “He came to me and asked for my number,” she narrates. “We exchanged numbers and initially communicated through messages. We became good friends and one day he proposed.” They got married in 2018 and started living with her parents (following the Khasi matrilineal tradition).
 
In 2019 Veronica had a minor accident: a car hit her, leaving her with a slipped disc that required physiotherapy. Since she couldn’t get leave for extended treatment she quit Bethany. After Ethan was born in 2020 she joined an international school but left after a year when the 7.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule made it nearly impossible for her to take care of the baby. She joined Kendriya Vidyalaya where she continues to work as a special education teacher, also occasionally stepping up to take classes for regular students when their teacher is absent.
 
Veronica has a wide range of hobbies: stamp collecting, handicrafts, painting and sketching, picture and video editing. As for Ferdinand, “I sing when I am happy,” he says. “Sometimes I wake up in the morning and start to sing.” He loves old songs and his favourite is ‘Take me to your heart’ by Michael Learns To Rock. “He’s an incredible singer,” Veronica affirms. “He also likes to play football. What I like most about him is that he has many dreams. Most Khasi men would be satisfied with a nine-to-five job but he is different. He is highly motivated, has a strong will, and is driven by passion.” She laughs affectionately as she interprets for him: “I want to become a successful social entrepreneur and start an NGO. I dream of becoming a famous author!”
 
But these are not mere pipedreams. Ferdinand is an NCPEDP-Javed Abidi Fellow of 2021. He has been involved in various government projects such as training electoral officials in sign language and writing books in Khasi for the district council. He has trained PwD in entrepreneurship and helped them seek opportunities for government jobs. He has written a book in Khasi on the Nongsteng Clan in Massar village in the East Khasi hills; all the female children of this clan go deaf by the age of 10, and no one has found out why. They have their own naturally evolved sign language. This has led him to pursue a PhD at the North Eastern Hill University, his research topic being “Sign language acquisition, structure and social implications of indigenous signs and the different variations of sign language in Meghalaya with a focus on Khasi and Garo.”
 
“What he likes most about me is that I don’t see his disability,” says Veronica. “I see him as a regular person.”

Photos:

Vicky Roy

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