The ‘Silent’ Winners

Rupam Banerjee

 It’s the peak hour on a weekend evening at a multinational fast food outlet in the City Centre in Rajarhat. There is such a huge rush that people have queued up outside the glistening doors of the popular joint. Employees are under a tremendous pressure as customers are getting impatient at yet-to-be cleared tables. Quite unmoved, one of the customer service team members, is totally engrossed in his job. Sprightly as he is, the 20 something employee, cleans up the mess fast—even the extremely noisy ambience can’t affect his concentration.

That this smiling team member is exceptional—and is differently-abled—becomes obvious when a customer asks the price of an item. He smartly informs the cost through his fluent hand-and-body gesture that can be understood by anybody. Meet the vivacious, and one of the most popular customer service members of the store, Rupam Banerjee. This Sodepur-based worker’s speaking and hearing disability couldn’t stop him from working in a job which needs constant interaction with customers.    

“He wasn’t like this from birth” says Rupam’s mother Soma Banerjee. “When he was two years old, during the Diwali, I’d first notice that Rupam is not responding to the loudening burst of crackers”. This observation lead to a series of medical tests until the Banerjees learned that their son is unable to hear. It turned out that, on an earlier occasion, when a doctor prescribed an antibiotic to treat his ear infection, the high dose of the drug had mistakenly damaged his internal auditory nerves. Crestfallen, Rupam’s parents had to admit Rupam to the The Regional Centre of Ali Yavar Jung National Institute of Hearing Handicapped at Bonhooghly, at the age of four. Being a diligent student, he acquired sign language very fast. And after 18 years of education, he joined ‘Silence’, a Kolkata-based non-governmental organisation, to get a special training. The six-month training program helped Rupam gain entry to the multinational fast food joint. “We never expected that Rupam will get a job and earn such a handsome amount,” said Rupam’s uncle Pranab Kar. “He is a living testimony what hard work and passion can achieve, notwithstanding any sort of obstacle.”

Kar recalled an anecdote after Rupam joined his new job. “We’d visited Siliguri to his sister’s home to attend a wedding ceremony. We returned home after having spent two sleepless nights there. Even though rest of us were dog tired looking for some rest, Rupam didn’t miss his night shift work at the joint.” Such is his dedication that his boss recently remarked that Rupam is capable of handling workload of 10 people.

Deafness or hearing impairment occurs due to various reasons. If someone is hard of hearing from early childhood, he or she becomes speech impaired by default because a child picks up a language after she gets to hear other people speaking. When an infant babbles, it is nothing but his or her experiment with language acquisition. “If she fails to hear anything, naturally she can’t perform the basic experiment of communication,” said Samir Ray, the former director of All India Federation of Deaf (Delhi) and one of the founders of ‘Silence’. 

According to Ray, if these people are trained properly they can do almost anything. Especially they are very good at doing ‘repetitive works,’ such as designing jewellery or data entry in any office.  More or less, most jobs tend to be drudgery to most so-called able-bodied people but not for the ‘disabled.  ‘A normal person, who is equipped with basic linguistics, speaks or writes using his or her linguistic reflex. But these people work or write with the help of visual reflex and that is why they are faster and more accurate, doing repetitive works,” added Ray. This is why these people are now aptly called ‘differently-abled’. “Even in the corporate world, these people have plenty of chances to work and perform better than others,” he adds.

The same view is shared by the Vice Chancellor of West Bengal State University, Prof. Ashoke Ranjan Thakur, who believes these people should be added to the mainstream of the society for better results in all walks of life. He says, “Their advantage is that, while working, they don’t hear anything. Naturally they don’t get distracted easily and the final output of the job is always better.” Among the six non-teaching employees at Barasat State University, three of them are verbally challenged. Prof Thakur thinks that isolation or social ostracization deteriorates their disability. “One should never forget that they have a unique diligence. They don’t need charity”.

Suman Mukherjee, Srila Mukherjee and Mital Sarkar-- three deaf-mute employees of Barasat State University are now happy citizens of India. Just like Rupam’s parents, their near and dear ones never thought they would work and contribute to the society some day. And now they are not only working, but performing better than the rest. Even Suman and Srila recently got married. And Rupam also has a soft corner for a girl he met at his elder sister’s weddding. However marriage is not a priority for 21-year old Rupam, “I’m not thinking of marriage now, and my work is everything for me at the moment. My next goal is to be wealthy and famous”, he says shyly in a passionate ‘voice’ of sign language.