The journey of my life as a hearing impaired
My childhood in India
When I was born in Jaipur, a city in India, my parents noticed at the age of 3 that I was not able to hear. As no one in my family had encountered such disability before, we went to several doctors to find the diagnosis of deafness. Once confirmed, it was a shocking moment for my parents to know that my future may be at risk. In the meantime, my mother was doing her Master’s degree in economics and my father was in the military service.
A little background about my family: My mother is a housewife and my father work as in the jewellery sector. One would consider us as a middle-class family in India. However, my parents still struggled to purchase hearing aids for me as they were quite expensive. I urgently needed them to be able to hear the world. At first, they only purchased one hearing aid. I remember my first time with my hearing aid — It was kind of an exciting moment to hear my mother’s voice for the first time, which I will never forget. My mother made huge sacrifices to ensure that I get the best treatment my family could afford. She took me to pedagogue every day. The pedagogue is a teacher who teaches students how to speak properly and how to learn the language. At the beginning, I took some tests that helped the pedagogue understand how much I already knew. I learned new words with memory and how to pronounce words by reading lips, which is one of my strengths. That process took me years to be able to speak and listen to someone. After I got another pair of my hearing aid, I went to Mahaveer Public School in Jaipur. Although I attended classes at pedagogue, it was still difficult to implement what I had learned. When you get hearing aids, you have to get used to it because at the beginning sounds around are very difficult to identify. I was very motivated to go to school and remembered my first day at school. It was very tough for me to listen to my students and follow the instructions from my teacher. As a hearing-impaired person, it is difficult to focus on several things (multi-tasking) because you are restricted to listen to only one person and you have to read lips. In a group setting, there’s just too much going on to fully engage in the discussion — people are talking too quickly, more than one person is talking at a time, their faces are turned away from you. You cannot keep up, and ultimately, you end up feeling excluded from the conversation. To be excluded from the conversation is one of the reasons why most hearing-impaired or deafness pull back from meetings or everywhere where there are lots of people communicating with each other. They don’t want to misunderstand someone and don’t like to ask over and over if they could not follow the conversation. Asking for help or getting help is very tough for disabled people. They feel being helpless.
My father was already in Germany since 1995 and sometimes came back to visit us. He told us that we could have a bright future especially for me by living in Germany. Germany has a great social system and provides help for disabled citizens. Their education system, health care system and the support for disabled people are the benefits for me to create a new chapter in my life. Today I realized that Germany opened up so many opportunities for me. For example, getting better hearing aids, go to a special school for disabled students, better law for disadvantage peoples and experienced pedagogues. My mother, my elder brother and I left migrated to Germany in 2003.
I would like to summarise my childhood in India: I enjoyed my childhood in India because of the culture, various activities like flying a kite and playing crickets. My life in India taught me an important lesson: Life gets very hard if you have no hope for the future.
My phase of life in Germany
When I came from India to Germany at the age of eight, I still remember one experience my excitement on the first day. I discovered that Germany is modern compared to where I was born. Everything was new to me: the traffic, the citizens, high buildings, the language, most important the fresh air etc. Here in Germany, I started school from the beginning because of the new language. I remember my first day at primary school. I felt that everybody was looking at me because of my hearing aids. No other student was handicapped. I could not understand what they said when they tried to talk to me as I did not speak German yet. I was bullied at school. It broke my heart the way others treated me. Today I understand that being bullied has a reason. When people put you down you try to stand up and fight for your future instead of giving up. My German vocabulary is restricted because I didn’t learn the mother language like “normal” babies. I missed the gap between my birth and being able to listen and hear my parents. That is the gap a hearing-impaired baby misses to learn their mother language. It took me almost three or four years to speak and to understand German properly. For me, that was a great and big challenge to face although I sometimes thought about giving up. Learning a new language is a tough challenge for hearing-impaired like me. I am proud of myself that I beat the first big challenge. I think when people are willing to fight for the challenge they will face the challenge. I was lucky to know that healthcare in Germany supports disabled peoples with their needs to balance their disability. Thanks to this kind of system I was able to get digital hearing aids to balance my hearing loss better. After primary school, I finished my economic high school in Germany among the third-best students in 2016. In business high school I had to face a lot of challenges. First, it was very difficult to confirm in the classroom with 35 students and second all of these teachers had no experience for disabled students. In that classroom, it was very difficult to listen to students and to follow the teachers as I read lips when communicating with somebody. Therefore, someone must be in front of me so. I had to self-teach every subject at home. One of my weakness is that I cannot learn in a group or class because I get overwhelmed when following conversations with more than two peoples. For those who are hearing-impaired, they can learn better alone because they need concentration and silence. The self-taught gave me two lections a) how to motivate yourself b) time management. I wanted to gain work experience so I decided to do an apprenticeship as a bank clerk. During my apprenticeship at KfW, the health care provided me with accessories for my hearing aids so that I was able to take part in meetings and discussions with my teams, do phone calls and communicate with my employees at work (during lunch, break). To be honest I could not afford all these needed accessories as insurances require you to co-pay. All these accessories helped me to lower the stress at work. I worked harder than my brothers to get educated at high school and to finish my apprenticeship as a bank clerk. I suffered a lot but I feel lucky that I did not give up and proved my parents one thing: Being disabled doesn’t mean that there is a limit where you cannot go beyond. No one of my family thought I could climb higher than expected. My favourite quote: “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” — Martin Luther King, Jr. To sum up: I faced three big challenges:
1. learn a new language
2. get educated
3. work at one of the biggest company in the world
My hearing loss is getting a worse year in year and I will probably become deaf soon. Therefore, I decided to study now and work later. Because being from hard of hearing to deafness is like paralysis. Your learning process in speaking and hearing will start all over again. Currently, I am a student at Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University and doing my bachelor degree in Finance and Economics. I chose to study Finance and Economics to gain more knowledge about markets and startups.
My dream is to start a company that provides hearing aids at low cost for others in need. In my opinion, the hearing aid is not a technology but essential medicine for people who are suffering from deafness. Some countries do not have a health care system or people don’t have access to the public health care system. I know how it feels for others when struggling to buy hearing aids they cannot afford. Children or adults that are affected by hearing loss need to get self-confidence. Self-confidence is important to them to not to lose hope. They need supports to balance their disadvantages.
