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    "result": {"pageContext":{"language":"en","pathURL":"simran-kumari","isDefaultLanguage":true,"storyData":{"Name":"Simran Kumari","Alt_Photos":null,"Alt_Text_Photo1":"Simran Kumari (22) stands outdoors facing another young woman next to a decorative concrete railing painted white. The railing has a cylindrical moulded handrail and stout, ornamental balusters. Simran wears blue jeans that peep out from beneath a calf-level, pale yellow, full-sleeved, round-necked kurta with white chikankari embroidery on the front. She wears glasses with a silvery plastic rectangular frame and her hair is tied back with a centre parting. The woman standing opposite her wears a blood-red full-sleeved shirt over beige trousers. She shows her raised palms to Simran who is smiling at her.","Alt_Text_Photo2":"Simran sits indoors in a round-backed teakwood chair upholstered in white. She wears a blood-red, V-necked dress with loose three-fourth sleeves. She wears golden earrings and on her wrist there is a broad golden bracelet shaped like an open cuff. She is reading a book with a white cover on which is printed the title “THE ABLE JOURNEY” in brown capitals. Below the title is the image of a rainbow pinwheel with its vanes displaying the whole spectrum of colours. Sunlight softly falls on her through a transparent white nylon curtain covering a plate-glass window. The heavy folds of a mustard curtain in a thick fabric have been drawn to the window’s right corner.","Alt_Text_Photo3":"Mid-shot of a smiling Simran facing the camera. She wears a full-sleeved, flesh-coloured purple shirt with the cuffs unbuttoned, revealing a thin red bangle on the left wrist and a bracelet of white beads on the right wrist. She has raised both arms to ear-level with palms outward. She has extended the ring finger, forefinger and thumb and folded the two middle fingers. The wall behind her is a vertical garden covered with small, oval, dark green leaves.","Alt_Text_Photo4":"Simran, wearing her blood-red dress, is applying lipstick with a lip brush while looking into a round, steel-backed mirror just big enough to show her face and neck. It is a pull-out mirror attached to the bathroom wall with a stainless steel swivel mechanism. Her reflection is also reflected in another, full-length mirror so that there are three views of Simran: from the back, side and front. The bathroom tiles are a speckled grey and the sliding door is chocolate brown.","Alt_Text_Photo5":"Waist-high shot of Simran, wearing her flesh-purple shirt, smiling at the camera while raising both hands in a thumbs-up sign. She is framed by paper pinwheels in a riot of colours that form two columns on either side of her. The pinwheels are coloured magenta, yellow, orange, red, violet, blue and green. The background is composed of squares of silken fabric coloured blood-red, light olive green, rust, mud-brown and saffron.","Alt_Text_Video":null,"Photo1_URL":"https://egsweb.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/Simran_Kumari/_O2A0305.jpg","Photo2_URL":"https://egsweb.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/Simran_Kumari/_O2A9922.jpg","Photo3_URL":"https://egsweb.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/Simran_Kumari/_O2A0206.jpg","Photo4_URL":"https://egsweb.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/Simran_Kumari/_O2A9957.jpg","Photo5_URL":"https://egsweb.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/Simran_Kumari/_O2A0173.jpg","Name_English":"Simran Kumari","Language":"en","Disability":["recxiHVc0FinkZpyx"],"Gender":"Female","Instagram_Content":"During the tenth anniversary of the Able Summit in Jaipur last week, the audience learnt Signs from Simran Kumari (22) for phrases such as “I need help”, “I will help you”, “Thank you”, “I’m sorry” and “I love you”. It was her debut on stage facing a large crowd. She has worked for the past two years as a Deaf educator in the Sai Swayam Society (SSS) School for the Deaf in Delhi.\n\nSimran was born with deafness as the eldest child of two Deaf parents from Ghaziabad – Pradeep Kumar (36) who works in a candy-manufacturing company and his wife Geeta Devi (39), a homemaker. She has two siblings, both hearing: Harshita (19) doing B.Sc and Naitik (13) in Class 10. The family developed its own sign language. In Ghaziabad Simran studied in the mainstream Santosh Shiksha Niketan Junior High School and Saraswati Shiksha Niketan Inter College where she took home science and arts. \n\nShe learnt ISL at the Noida Deaf Society (NDS), an NGO that provided eight months of training in computers, English and personal development. Before she could complete her NDS training, however, her uncle urged her to write the entrance exam to join the ISL Research and Training Centre. Qualifying for the Diploma in Teaching ISL course was a big achievement but she was thrown off balance at first in the new environment. By the second year, however, she had gained enough confidence to prepare lectures herself.  She completed the course in 2024 and in just three months secured the job at SSS. There are other sides to Simran: she bagged a silver medal in Deaf chess and does modeling too! She is now preparing for the government Staff Selection Commission (SSC) exams.","Quote":"“My English has always been good. In my spare time I try to improve it even further”","Status":"Published","Video":null,"Website_Content":"During a session at the tenth anniversary of the Able Summit in Jaipur last week, the audience learnt a few Signs from a young woman. Communicating via Dr Aditi Mishra, a ‘hearing’ educator, she taught people how to convey, in Indian Sign Language (ISL), phrases such as “I need help”, “I will help you”, “Thank you”, “I’m sorry” and “I love you”. \n \nIt was the first time Simran Kumari (22) from Ghaziabad had taken the stage to face a large crowd. Classrooms are her familiar spaces. She has worked for the past two years as a Deaf educator in the Sai Swayam Society (SSS) School for the Deaf in Delhi, imparting the sort of education she herself never received studying in a mainstream school in Ghaziabad.\n \nSimran was born with deafness as the eldest child of two Deaf parents – Pradeep Kumar (36) who works in a candy-manufacturing company and his wife Geeta Devi (39), a homemaker. Pradeep and Geeta both studied in the same Deaf school; he finished his intermediate while she passed Class 8. They have two other children, both hearing: Harshita (19) doing B.Sc and Naitik (13) in Class 10. \n \n“Everyone at home signs,” Simran told us through an interpreter. “We developed our own sign language to communicate with each other.” It was only years later that she learnt ISL. She studied in the Hindi medium section of a mainstream private school – Santosh Shiksha Niketan Junior High School, Ghaziabad. Her parents and Pradeep’s sister helped her study; later, Harshita too joined the same school, though in the English medium; she would borrow Simran’s classmates’ notes and interpret them for her. Simran did well in English and Math and secured 71 per cent in Class 10. She believes she might have done better if she had joined the English medium, which the principal disallowed. “Hindi is difficult to learn for deaf people,” said Simran. “That is why I could not do well in Hindi as well as other subjects like social studies and science.”\n \nSimran remembers that in Class 3 she tried showing her classmates how to sign some basic words but they were not interested. The sole friend she had was targeted by other kids who asked her, “Why are you friends with that deaf girl?” But Simran persisted, and by Class 5 she had four friends whom she taught the Sign alphabet and simple words like hello, water, happy, and eating. Seeing them sign, other children too got involved. Sometimes in class everyone would start interpreting for her and the teacher, annoyed by this interruption, would stop them. \n \nAfter Class 10 she moved to Saraswati Shiksha Niketan Inter College in Ghaziabad where she took home science and arts. She managed to get 63 per cent in Class 12 and finally learnt ISL at the Noida Deaf Society (NDS), an NGO that provided eight months of training, which covered computers, English and personal development. “I learnt a lot in NDS,” she says. “I was able to express myself. I felt I belonged.”\n \nBefore she could complete her NDS training, however, her uncle urged her to write the entrance exam to join the ISL Research and Training Centre. Qualifying for the Diploma in Teaching ISL course was a big achievement and the family was on cloud nine. Her fellow students were from different parts of the country such as Manipur, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, and she discovered that each state or language had its own signs. She was thrown off balance at first but a friend, Preeti, encouraged her to stay on. “They also teach deaf culture, identity and history,” she recounts. She made slow progress and by the second year had gained enough confidence to prepare lectures herself. She completed the course in 2024 and her job hunt ended in just three months when she secured the teaching position at SSS. Simran began teaching only Nursery and Kindergarten but Meera Chetan Bhatia, the CEO of SSS, encouraged her to handle the higher classes. Now she teaches all subjects for Classes 5 and 6 and English for Classes 11 and 12, using visual aids confidently.\n \nSimran commutes independently; the mobile phone has been a major aid. When asked what she likes to do in her free time, she said “I’m always trying to improve my English.” But there are other sides to her, she revealed. Geeta Devi, a silver-medal-winner in Deaf Chess, taught her the game, and now she too has bagged silver in Deaf Chess just like her mother! Oh, she has done modelling too!\n \nSimran is now preparing for the government Staff Selection Commission (SSC) exams. “I like to explore new avenues always,” she says.\n","State_name":"Uttar Pradesh","Display_Order":271}}},
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