He walks into the room wearing a smile, and lives with a hope in his heart that one-day things will change for him and many other people like him.
Delhi-based hearing and speech impaired artist and activist Apoorv Om was conferred with National Youth Award (it comprises a medal, a certificate and Rs 50,000 cash) for his contribution in art and social work, by Union Minister of Youth and Sports Kiren Rijiju on International Youth Day in New Delhi, recently. After this award was announced in 2000, Om, 24, is its first deaf recipient.
While he’s elated about the milestone, he’s geared up to fulfil more dreams. “India has a dearth of support, policies, and infrastructure to provide quality education to the disabled at the same platform like normal kids,” he says, adding a provision of digital communication for such people will eliminate the usage of sign language so everyone can think and work at the same level.
Apoorv Om was just nine when his parents Meena Saha, a housewife and Bikash Chandra, an advocate in Supreme Court realised Om was deaf and speech impaired.
His mother Saha recalls, “After being informed by a counsellor at AIIMS, we admitted him at Navy Children School in Chanakyapuri, where he studied with ‘normal’ kids till Class 10.
But after that he started facing problems. He had no friends, and communication became a hurdle.”
Apart from being studious, Om always had a creative bent of mind. His 2D hanging model of the UNESCO HQ Building has been on display at the Main Exhibition Hall of UNESCO in Paris since 2017. And not everybody manages to get 77th rank in IIT-JEE.
Despite working hard for it, he was denied admission to CIC, Delhi University and School of Planning and Architecture. “Later, I secured admission in B Arch at the SPA but no support from the authorities forced me to quit. They said they had no staff equipped to teach me,” he says, communicating through gestures.
He will benefit from a cochlear implant, but it costs Rs 27 lakh, which the family can’t afford.
For now, Apoorv Om teaches yoga, art and craft and communicating through Google to many underprivileged children on weekends.
“We work with NGOs to make people aware that deaf people are not a different section of society, and they shouldn’t be looked down upon,” he says, adding how he has enrolled for a six-month yoga course at Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga, but again the institute doesn’t have a special educator.
Apoorv Om says he has offers from many universities to pursue study in architecture, provided he’s fluent in sign language. “But I don’t want to learn it.
There should be policies for inclusion of deaf and differently-abled people into the mainstream. There should be an app to help people like me.”
In a meeting with Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment Thawar Chand Gehlot on Tuesday, Apoorv Om has said, “There should be a representative for the hearing impaired in the Parliament. Only then, will we be able to put forward our problems.
I also want to be a part of the advisory committee, so that I can give ideas for the betterment those like me.”
Apoorv Om can’t speak. But the anxiety that permeates from his eyes coupled with an active body language, states that here is someone, who will not give up.