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shibashish

shibashish
dey , meghalaya

Shibashish Dey (40) wearing a red T-shirt sits in an armless chair upholstered in brown leather. He is clean-shaven and has black wavy hair. His legs are crossed and his interlocked hands rest on his knees. The chair leather is ripped in places where the foam stuffing peeps out. The room has sandalwood-yellow walls. Next to Shibashish there is a tall signboard placed on a stool and propped up against the wall. It says in capitals: WE UNDERTAKE REPAIRING, and beneath it, one below the other, these words in capitals: ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES HEATER BLOWER IRON RICE COOKER. On the stool in front of the sign there are three irons and an electric kettle.
Shibashish wearing a deep maroon full-sleeved shirt sits behind a large table topped with a teakwood finish. There is a glass sheet on top of the table. A calendar with the photo of a black-and-white bird against a green background hangs on the off-white wall behind him. He holds a piece of yellow craft paper in his hands. On the table there are finished craft works: three small boxes – a red, a yellow and a green. A white paper horse stands on the table to the left of the glass sheet. On the table, to the right, there is a stack of red, yellow, black and white photo frames made of craft paper.
Shibashish stands outdoors, arms folded, wearing a coffee-brown, sleeveless jacket with the zipper open over a T-shirt in narrow black and grey horizontal stripes. Behind him is a building with “Bethany Society Complex” in red capitals embedded high up on the wall. The building is fenced with green, chicken mesh wire. Large white boards with blue lettering are fixed to the fence in a row. Between Shibashish and the fence there is a raised, concrete-paved pathway with an iron railing made of two yellow bars that run horizontally between blue uprights.
Side shot of Shibashish standing in the kitchen in front of an induction stove. He wears a black T-shirt with small white polka dots and white piping at the sleeves and collar. There is an aluminium saucepan on the flat surface of the stove and he is spooning out tea-powder into it from a transparent plastic container in his left hand. The light blue wall behind him has a narrow window covered with a curtain in a blue and grey pattern. To the right of the window, in a niche high up on the wall, there are two rows of plastic containers filled with condiments. Another niche below it contains a single-burner gas stove.
Shibashish sits with his wife Shamonlang Nongrum (33) and son Rith (3) in an off-white double-seater cane chair. On the dark cream wall behind them is a window covered with a curtain. The curtain has alternating grey and white panels with a vine pattern of blue flowers and brown leaves running vertically along them. Shamonlang wears a red blouse and a traditional jainsem, a cloth with tiny green and white checks draped crosswise and pinned at one shoulder. Rith sits on her lap wearing blue knickerbockers and a blue and grey sweatshirt. They are both looking down into a screen that Shibashish is holding out to them. He wears grey pants and T-shirt with grey and black horizontal stripes.
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“I wish that persons with all kinds of disabilities would come together and be united”

Three-year-old Rith Dey Nongrum from Shillong, Meghalaya goes to nursery school and knows the English alphabet. But he has yet to learn his mother tongue, which is the same as his ‘father tongue’. No, we’re not speaking of Khasi, Garo or Jaintia or any of the other languages spoken in the state. This tongue is known by only a minuscule fraction of the population, although at least five million Indians would benefit from using it.
 
We are speaking of Indian Sign Language (ISL). It’s a language that Shibashish Dey (40) and Shamonlang Nongrum (33) have in common. We were curious to know from Shibashish how a Deaf couple communicated with their hearing tot. “I am slowly teaching him how to Sign,” he messaged us. “On Saturdays and Sundays my cousin teaches him to speak English.” Rith also absorbs language from watching Kids TV. He must now learn to make the connection between the spoken and the silent languages, between word and gesture.
 
Shibashish was born deaf, to Sunil Dey, a taxidriver, and Lila Dey, a homemaker. Their other son and three daughters were all hearing. Through his interpreter Ridahun Khriam, Shibashish told us that as an infant he was constantly crying because he did not know how to express his basic urges to his mother. When he was two years old he started to point and use gestures to indicate that he was hungry, that he wanted to eat, to drink and so on. Nursery school was a disaster because he couldn’t hear and didn’t know what was going on. Sunil and Lila took him to Tripura for a hearing test. They stayed there for a year and he was fitted with a hearing aid. After they returned they admitted him to the School and Centre for Hearing Handicapped Children in Shillong.
 
ISL is taught in less than 700 deaf schools in India. The teachers of most deaf schools don’t even know ISL since there are fewer than 300 Sign interpreters in the country! “It became very difficult to pursue my studies so I stopped at Class 8,” said Shibashish, echoing what thousands of other deaf and hearing impaired Indians have experienced. We fail to grasp the elementary difference between Sign and spoken/written communication: that while one conveys ideas the other requires knowledge of grammar and syntax. In Sign you don’t need to know about noun, pronoun, verb or adjective. The Indian Sign Language and Research Centre (ISLRTC) was set up only in 2015. ISLRTC is compiling an ISL dictionary with standardised Signs to be used across India (since some regional differences currently exist).
 
Shibashish is as an assistant teacher at Roilang Livelihood Academy, the vocational training centre of Bethany Society which creates opportunities for persons with disabilities and the rural poor. He is a multi-tasker, says Ridahun who also works at the centre. He does screen printing, makes wedding and other invitation cards, is a plumber, an electrician, and takes care of maintenance on the campus, undertaking any and all repairs needed.
 
Shibashish met Shamonlang at Roilang in 2014 and after a silent courtship of four years they got married in 2018. Two telling pictures hang side by side on a wall of their home: Jesus and Shiva-Parvati! Yes, he tells us, he is a Hindu and Shamonlang is a Christian, but what does that matter when two hearts beat as one?
 
Shibashish’s hobbies are cooking and watching TV. He says, “I wish the world would be accessible to disabled people so that they can enjoy life.” 

Photos:

Vicky Roy

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