BENGALURU: Tanzanian boy Apulihe Bohela is the naughtiest of the lot. One minute he is with his mother and the next he is in every corner of the room. His mother drags him towards her, and starts singing the Tanzanian national song. Apulihe jumps along, joins her and sings the song with pride. Soon, his voice overpowers hers. At the end of the song, he innocently applauds himself.
Shy-boy Lochan is always clinging to his mother. As his therapist starts off singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, he slowly starts making hand gestures and joins his therapist. By the time they reach ...in the sky, it is just Lochan singing his heart out.
A few years ago, they were all deaf and mute children. Today, they are humming birds. Thanks to Dr Sunil Narayan Dutt’s creative speech and hearing therapy sessions at Vani Pradhan Kendra (VPK), a registered charitable trust for ‘the Cause of Deafness’. What’s special here is that apart from regular auditory-verbal therapy to the cochlear implants, the kids are taught to learn and appreciate music, through music.
Only a very few centres in the country use yoga and music sessions and Vani Pradhan Kendra at BTM Layout is one of them. Dr Sunil Narayan Dutt, Cochlear implant surgeon, Apollo Hospitals, is the founder-president of the Kendra, his wife Dr Chandrika S Dutt, is the managing trustee, and VPK is managed by Dr Sunil’s mother Bhagya N Swamy. They have two audiologists —speech and language pathologists — and two speech therapists (Habilitationists)
Dr Sunil Narayan Dutt says, “One out of every 1,000 children born in India is deaf and mute. But they too can lead a normal life just like us -- thanks to cochlear implants, the only man-made device that has completely replaced a sense organ. Cochlear implant surgery takes around two hours and about three weeks to heal. Precautions are taken to control infections. After three weeks, an audiologist will ‘switch on’ the device and set the frequencies depending on the requirement of the particular child. Once it is switched on, we get to hear the child’s cry of first hearing.”
“When the device is turned on, that’s when the children hear anything for the first time. As soon as they hear, they start crying because their brain processes it as threat or pain. The cry is as loud as the cry at birth and that’s why we call it the child’s cry of first hearing. At this moment, the child gets a new lease of life,” Dr Sunil adds.
Post this, the child is referred to speech therapy, which is a must. The therapy enables them to hear without having to lip-read and helps them differentiate between sound, music and noise. To break the monotony and make it more creative and make a child more receptive to develop speech and language, we started music and yoga therapy, Dr Sunil says.
At Vani Pradhan Kendra, the day begins with yoga sessions. “Most kids are hyper-active and cannot concentrate. Yoga helps us calm them,” says Dr Chandrika S Dutt.
The session begins with a prayer. Kids are then taught Garjasana — where they are told to make roaring sounds like different animals. “This helps in toning their oral muscles, vocal chord, and angle of the mouth and tongue movement. We have observed reduction in nasal twang and increased clarity in speech in a few students,” Dr Chandrika observes.
“Mediation helps them concentrate during sessions,” she adds.
Dr Sunil says that until recently, many people did not appreciate the concept of teaching these kids music because they believed in just helping the kids hear and teaching them a language so that they too can lead a normal life.
“Here, it is a music and lyrical affair. The first thing we teach them is nursery rhymes. If they can get the rhymes with the music first, then we teach them different types of pitch, tonality and rhythm. Then we introduce them to songs so that they can appreciate music. They get the rhythm, melody, and they can even sense noise like any other kid. All our students can sing and dance,” Dr Sunil adds.
Then, the therapists, during one-on-one sessions, start off with phonetics in songs. Slowly the kids are introduced to language and vocabulary. Initially, they are taught only one language as it takes time for them to pick -up. “Once they pick up the vocabulary – mother tongue or English – a few years down the line, they can start learning other languages as well,” Dr Sunil concludes.