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shimon

shimon
singh , madhya
pradesh

Shimon Singh (22), wearing a greenish blue sleeveless vest tucked into navy blue track pants, stands in a corner of a room. The walls that meet at the corner are of different colours: one is pista green and the other has wallpaper in a brown floral pattern. A brown wooden almirah is placed flush against the wallpaper and Shimon’s body is reflected in a full-length mirror embedded in the almirah door. Shimon has short, straight, black hair and a stubbly beard and moustache. His lips are tightened in determination as he looks at a heavy black dumbbell that he holds up in his right hand with his fingers gripping the central metal rod. The dumbbell has hexagonal ends and he holds the left end with his left hand.
A side shot of Shimon, in black T-shirt and navy blue shorts, sitting in a chair, reading a newspaper. The front page of the paper says “Dainik Jagaran” in Hindi. There is a padded steel chair in front of him, facing the camera. The chair back is a steel frame with five horizontal bars. A white cup with a handle and a floral design around the brim is placed on the dark grey seat of the chair. Next to the cup there is a folded newspaper. Behind the chair there is a row of potted plants including a money-plant creeper. Just behind the plants there is a light emerald green half-wall topped by an iron grill with spaced-out vertical bars.
Shimon, wearing a T-shirt with thin, black-and-white, horizontal stripes paired with black pants, is sitting on the side of a bed, playing a dark brown, toy-sized guitar with four strings. He is looking down at the guitar which he holds close to his chest with his right hand; the fingers of his left hand are wrapped around the fretboard. The bed is covered with a purple counterpane and has a red pillow and a wooden headboard.
Mid shot of Shimon wearing a vermillion T-shirt. On the chest of the shirt there are broad vertical rectangular patches next to one another. There are two white bands on the extreme left, two yellow bands in the middle and two black bands on the right. The background is a pale bluish green. Shimon is smiling and holding up both hands with his fingers showing the V sign.
In a room with pale pink walls, Shimon sits in the middle of a wooden sofa with his mother Reeta Singh (54) to the left and father Nelson Singh (58) to the right. High up on the wall above them hangs a wooden engraving depicting the Last Supper with Jesus. In front of them there is a large glass-topped table. A white porcelain pot of orange artificial flowers rests on the table. Reeta wears a long full-sleeved kurta with vertical stripes of brown, cream and red. She holds the handle of a tall red cup in her right hand and is smiling at Nelson. Shimon is smiling and looking down at his clasped hands that rest on his lap. He wears brown pants and a light-coloured T-shirt with a hazy design of pale pink and green. Nelson wears shorts in grey and white checks and a navy blue T-shirt. He sits with legs crossed and left arm placed on the sofa’s armrest. He holds a cup identical to Reeta’s in his right hand while he looks at her.
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“I go to the gym with my father every day. And I love to sing”

It was quite a shock for Nelson Singh to discover via his adolescent son Shimon’s blood test that he himself was a carrier of the sickle cell gene. Fortunately for both father and son it was only the Sickle Cell Trait (SCT) that got passed on, not Sickle Cell Disease (SCD), a group of inherited red blood cell disorders that includes Sickle Cell Anemia. SCA is incurable and can cause episodes of acute pain besides other complications.
 
Nelson Singh (58) and his wife Reeta Singh (54) are both government employees; he is a Finance officer in the Central Government, and she, joint director in the Madhya Pradesh department of Statistics and Planning. They have lived in Bhopal with their two sons Sharon (29) and Shimon (22) for the past 30 years.
 
As a child Shimon used to keep saying his hands pained while writing; he couldn’t finish writing his exams on time and needed a scribe. He was in his pre-teens when his parents took him to a noted child specialist in Nagpur. A simple blood test confirmed SCT, and so the parents were tested as well. Nelson carried the gene, which meant there was a 50 per cent chance of a child inheriting it. “The doctor counselled us,” says Nelson. “He said that SCT would not stop Shimon from leading a full life, and he pointed to me as an example. I hadn’t even been aware my entire life that I carried this gene!”
 
After you know your child has a particular genetic trait, even if you know it hasn’t affected his growth you tend to feel more protective of him. That is what seems to have happened with the Singh couple. Since both of them hold fulltime jobs, they took care to ensure his safety since “his confidence level is a little low”. Reeta says, “When I am at work I call him two to three times a day to check on him.” She says he is extremely disciplined and likes following a routine: “In the morning when he wakes up, he makes sure to check everybody’s phone to see if it is charged, and if not, he puts it on charging.”
 
Despite Shimon having been a “slow learner” in school, he has an excellent memory, and his parents narrate numerous instances of his powers of recollection. Since he was a kid he used to remember what was on the shopping list and recite it in order. Vehicle numbers and phone numbers are instantly and automatically imprinted in his brain. Once, he went with his father to the pharmacy to buy his mother’s medicines. Nelson forgot the name of one of the medicines but Shimon remembered all of their exact names perfectly.
 
While Sharon is Assistant Professor in Jagran Lakecity University, Shimon has finished his B.A. and his parents have enrolled him in a B.Ed course. “Every day, after I come back from work at 5.30 p.m., Shimon and I go to the gym,” says Nelson. Shimon adds, “I like working out on the exercise bike and the treadmill.” He reads the newspaper thoroughly and keeps up with news on television besides enjoying TV comedy shows such as the Kapil Sharma Show and Tarak Mehta Ka Ulta Chashma.
 
Shimon loves to sing and likes the singer Arijit Singh. Reeta says that her son’s rendition of “Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas” from the Hindi movie of the same name is her favourite. In fact he sang for Vicky Roy when he went there to take photos and Vicky suggested that the parents enrol him in a music class.
 
When we asked Shimon about his favourite food he replied, “Ghar ka khana (home-cooked food)”. What most appeals to him is a simple meal of rice and dal. Reeta says that when she phones him and asks whether he would like her to bring him some snack or ice-cream on her way home from work, he chides her, saying, junk food is unhealthy.
 
We asked Shimon whether he has friends. He replied, “Yes, but I like spending time with my dad. He is my best friend.”


Photos:

Vicky Roy

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