BENGALURU: We have failed as a society, says Karthik Sagiraju, owner of the restaurant Echoes in Koramangala, who has hired speech and hearing impaired staff at his restaurant. “We need to support and provide them with more opportunities.” That’s his message to all on the World Disability Day. “We have cornered them so much that they find it difficult to trust us and be comfortable with us. I took months to gain their trust and confidence.”
Karthik has been active with his campaign on disability for long. He has organised events to create awareness about Alzheimer’s and other mental health issues. Two years ago, on International Workers’ Day, he quit his job as a business analyst at a startup. Recalling the days that led up to him taking milestone decisions, he says, “I got my cousins, Arjun Nadimpalli, Akash Raju, and Girish Raju - all engineers except Girish Raju, to quit their jobs. We had plans of starting an eatery. One day, we happened to meet Naresh, a speech and hearing impaired person in a cafe, who was forced to switch jobs owing to his disability. That’s how I got an idea of starting something where people like him could be the majority, and don’t feel like the odd one out. For broken crayons still colour,” he says.
On contacting the owner of the cafe where Naresh worked, he learned that there is a restaurant in Delhi, which is run by PwD “I got in touch with them and found that they had plans to expand and hence, we went ahead and set up this space here in March 2017.”
The hiring of the staff fell into place once Karthik connected with Naresh with a job offer. He readily agreed and even got some of his friends to join. “While the place was getting ready, we would learn sign language. Some speech and hearing impaired persons saw us communicating, and got curious. We told them about our eatery and today, we have 15 staff working here,” he says.
Sreenivas, a staff member communicated with CE in sign language, saying that communication at the restaurant hasn’t been a problem. Talking about using word of mouth to market the space, Karthik says, “We didn’t want to market the place saying it’s run by PwD We wanted people to walk in and find out. Today, people wait in queues to get a table.”
How they work
Switches on each table flicker when pressed, thereby calling attention to the staff. To order, customers write down the code number of the items, mentioned in the menu. The server then returns with a confirmation slip, after which the order is sent to the kitchen. For other communication needs, there is a calendar on each table with common phrases.