The Indian Sign Language Academy - A Work Update

Back in February the Finance Minister announced in his budget funding for a Sign Language academy. The Deaf Way Foundation Director, Arun C. Rao, wrote a blog post and detailed his delight alongside his concerns that the Deaf community would not have effective participation in decisions as to how the academy would be run.

Here’s some background: India has over 500 schools for the Deaf, only two of which use Sign Language. The trend is very much towards the oral, audist approach of teaching and is therefore not successful. The government provides this schooling up to class eight. With the bare minimum for any employment worth considering a pass at the 10th class with any decent job requesting a class 12 minimum standard, Deaf people have been left behind for years. The academy should push forward the agenda of bilingualism and create Sign Language modules for the B.Ed. programme that teachers of the Deaf must take before being let off their leashes in the classroom. In short, teachers have been, for years, teaching in a language the children do not understand.

Interpreter provision is sketchy at best, non-existent at its worst. Interpreters are mostly provided by NGOs  such as Deaf Way and ad hoc interpreting done by bilingual family and friends. Deaf people complain that the interpreters trained by the government organisation are unintelligible and the classes mostly teach Deaf studies and basic sign language. Deaf Way will be delivering the first of five courses in August directly to those already working and skilled giving them quality teaching on ethics, interpreting theory and practical ways of improving and supporting themselves after the course.

The centre will ultimately give Indian Sign Language (ISL) the due it deserves and if successful in its current proposed form, the centre could be the biggest Sign Language Research centre in the world. The Indian government has the chance to bring forward ISL and the efforts of the Deaf community into line and even become a global leader in Sign Language linguistics.

One thing that surprises me is ISL has no real body of literature yet. There are no Deaf film producers, actors, poets, writers or presenters here as there are in the UK. The academy will encourage the Deaf community to be creative and will catalogue the results showcasing them at film festivals and other celebrations of the language.

In all the belated and important work being proposed what I am working on is just a start. The interpreter training is the main task, alongside side providing interpreter support and consultation for the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) in creating their government proposal for the academy. These proposals have been circulated within the Deaf community and consultations have proved fruitful. I was working on the proposals with NAD right up until I left for my holiday to ensure all feedback was included and the budgets were feasible. It gives me great pleasure to read another one of Arun’s posts and see the NAD proposals are being well received by those in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. It looks like Deaf people and ISL will finally get the recognition they deserve.  

Single, White, Female

Solo?

Yes solo.

Just one?

Yes just one.

No man?

No man.

On average I had this conversation twice a day whilst away in Malaysia. It’s not like this isn’t part of daily life in India though:

Shaadi?

No, not married.

Bachche?

No. No children.

Where are your family?

UK.

You don’t miss them?

Yes I do.

No husband?

Noooo.

How old are you?

37 (Cue short intake of breath).

By Indian standards I’m a bit odd. By UK standards I’m a bit of an anomaly but less so and actually who cares? Thing is, judging by the amount of books written about lone female travellers I really thought I wasn’t that different. But you travel round or live anywhere for a while in Asia and you’ll notice you’re still a rarity. One man even asked before I started a jungle trek if I wasn’t scared I’d get lost. Travelling is bad enough, but what are the stereotypes and cultural pressures in India as a single female?

I’ve had chats with friends who say everyone they know is in a love marriage or that they aren’t being pressurised into an arranged marriage. But then they are the lucky ones. However strong the social pressure is to be married with kids in the UK, here it is far worse. Many more women report pressure from parents, endless meetings with potential partners and Shaadi.com, I kid you not, is pretty popular.  Some have secret boyfriends whom they wish to marry but their parents won’t let them as they are in different strata of society. Men too face pressure from eager parents keen to fulfil their social obligations. The topic of sex is taboo. Because of this certain parks are known as lovers’ make out places and the abortion rate is on the increase.

This is Delhi. It’s the capital city and conservative compared to Mumbai. But those who are approaching their 30s that have the strength, social position or freedom to rebel do so. Parents may insist on arranged marriages but the lucky ones are allowed their choices. Elsewhere those from more moderate backgrounds or more rural areas are under more pressure. Child marriage, before the age of 18, is well documented and prevalent in rural communities. Kids as young as 11 are paired off and girls are often pregnant with their first child by 12 or 13. Once married there may be other issues.

Dowry torture, where a wife’s new family may try to kill off the bride so the husband can remarry and bring a new dowry to the family is often in the news. Less reported are false accusations that can damage a husband’s family and its reputation.

Many of these social problems stem from an ingrained culture of boys having more value than girls in society. This causes female infanticide where female foetuses are unwanted and therefore aborted. In the case of child marriage a lack of women causes communities to want to get the girls and marry off their offspring early.  

Whether in the city or rural, male or female, the stereotypes and cultural pressure exist. I’m no expert on these issues and they run much deeper than what I have stated here. Still, anyone can clearly see the effects old prejudices have on today’s society. It may not be easy being in your 30s, single and living with India’s slow cultural change but as a gori I get it easy.

Pic from: Daily Times  

India Vs The Rest of the World

I took my credit card, a budget from my savings and for my birthday did what I always do: took off somewhere tropical to do some diving. Indian and Sri Lankan dive sites are currently out of season so it was off to Malaysia – home to Pulau Sipadan in Borneo, one of the top ten dive sites in the world. En route and on my return I went to KL, Kota Kinabalu, Semporna, Sepilok, Penang and back to KL to take in some sights, Orangutans and some tasty food. I  had a list made for me of must eats from another volunteer so steadily worked my way through Malaysia's famous dishes such as Laksa and Rendang. I also met up with two ex-VSO volunteers in Penang who regaled me with tales of life post VSO and took me out for some delicious Baba Nyonya food.

On my first trip out of India in eight months I found that I’d forgotten what the rest of the world was like. I’ve seen enough of India to know it is at least five countries rolled into one. The colder, mountainous North of the Himalayan belt has its Tibetan influences. The richer South has the tourists’ havens of Kerala and Goa alongside Orissa and Chennai where the local women wear every colour of sari as long as it’s bright. There are the more isolated, troubled yet beautiful Eastern states of Assam and around. The West contains the ports of Gujurat and cities such as Mumbai that have played an important part in India’s economic development. The varied central states from Rajasthan to Delhi to West Bengal are characterised by a dry heat and plenty of religious places: Bodhgaya the birthplace of Buddhism and Hindu mecca Varanasi on the Ganges.

No matter its different forms, India is still unmistakably India. It’s bewildering, confusing, noisy and altogether different. So what does the rest of the world have that India doesn’t? Malaysia was a welcome reminder. Public toilets (men don’t piss on the street here), pavements (India has them but people use them to park bikes and scooters), people that don’t stare (they wave and say hello), transport is easier to navigate and on time (I got stranded once in a town at 4.30am as the night bus was early) and a huge mix of people from the influx of immigrants. Malaysia has a high Indian and Chinese population, extant for up to four generations. In reality, they are not afforded the same rights as Malays and this is causing unrest and mass migration. KL also had skyscrapers. Delhi buildings are rarely over six stories so for the first time since leaving built-up London I walked around looking skywards.

Despite all this, after 10 or so days I may have missed India. Just a little bit, but don’t tell anyone. A country so diverse from within it doesn’t suffer culturally or otherwise from a lack of immigrants. The food is obviously great. I avoided all the Indian dhabas in Malaysia in preference of pretty much anything with beef or seafood. Now I am back it is tasty, flavourful masala doused dishes all the way. It’s not that there is animosity here. You just need to work harder to meet people before being rewarded with their excellent hospitality. I’m taking my work colleague up on that offer of a roti making lesson as soon as I see her. Why do I need to marvel at the mosques of Malaysia or if I was in Europe, churches? Here I can see mandirs, gurdwaras, mosques, churches and Buddhist and Jain temples in every neighbourhood. Most stalls or shops even have their own shrines with incense burning away inside. My Saturday morning trips to replenish stocks are always interesting. And there is a reason the world loves Bollywood. It’s brilliant. One Malaysian taxi driver was singing songs to me on the way to the airpoirt. I declined his marriage proposal but that’s another story.

For all its confusion, India will never be boring. Even after eight months I still find it exciting, wonderful, intriguing and colourful. I could carry on with a whole host of adjectives but I think you get the picture: I still quite like it here.

Cleared out by The Games

With the Commonwealth Games only 98 days away there have been reports that the government is up to no good again. In the year leading up to the Games they have been arresting beggars and clearing slums.

A reported 52% of people living in Delhi reside in slums. ‘Reside’ is a bad word, ‘survive’ would be better. You can see people washing from a bucket outside, cooking on basic gas stoves and eeking out an existence threading flowers into garlands for temple goers. At more than half of the cities’ population of 15 million, that’s a shocking amount of people living in conditions like this. Often slums are right by the roadside and clearly visible to any passers-by. There has been a few that were allowed to stay in place and screening such as fences or trees were used. For the others, as an eye-sore and an embarrassment for India, the Delhi Development Authority and other departments have been at work.

It is well-reported that beggars have been arrested and put in jail without trial until after October when they may be released. Beggars’ jails are in existence here which are called homes for beggars but in reality they are mini prisons housed next to the bigger prisons. With so many beggars to be tried there have been some initiatives such as a beggars’ court where beggars are tried in a mobile van before being and carted off to the ‘home’.

Recently, Mike Rosenkrantz, another VSO volunteer, received a text from someone in the slums near the Indian Social Institute (ISI) where VSO holds its orientation training. He found out that slum clearances were going on here. If you want to see the area before it got bull-dozed it features on one of my You Tube videos from November 2009.

We walked past these people every day. They looked at us as we walked by and we smiled and laughed with the children all the while getting a glimpse of the side of India that isn’t shining. Now their semi-permanent brick-made shelters are gone and families are homeless once more. Finding out why the government has cleared this particular area, which is not visible from the main road, is unbelievable. These people were displaced as apparently Delhi needed more parking for the Games.    

Manali and Mountains

After a 16 hour bus journey another volunteer and I arrived in Manali in the region of Himachel Pradesh. How great it was to get away to the cool of the mountains for the weekend. Warm enough for T-shirts in the day and cool enough for jeans and fleeces in the evenings. It was a revelation compared to the current 40 plus heat. Yesterday here it hit 50 plus on someone’s thermometer. The AC at home struggled to cool down my flat. I wasn’t sure if it was even on at one point. In Manali it rained a bit every day and it was a welcome experience.

Welcomed by the usual touts and auto drivers fresh off the bus we made it past the hordes until we got a reasonable price and headed into Old Manali. Past new Manali we went up the hill into the world of the backpacker, aging hippy and dried out volunteers. Signs outside cafes screamed banana pancakes, nutella croissants and coffee. All of which must be consumed sitting outside with an air of smugness and a world weary look on ones face. My own smugness tends to come in at the point where I hear someone bragging about their travels and I think, well I live and work here so probably best not to come over here with your stories.

We escaped the tourist merry-go-round of cheap massages and pedicures and fortune-telling by heading to the mountains the next day for a three day trek. We chose an easy option which is lucky when being in the Delhi heat means exercise is irregular and usually short-lived. We were rewarded by green foothills and colourful villages. Sleeping in a tent, fed on dahl and roti, listening to the sound of the River Beas was pretty amazing. Another three hour trek the next day rewarded us with a camp site 3000m up on the side of Patalsu mountain surrounded by the other snow-capped peaks. Lolling around in the sunshine all afternoon, reading, chatting to passing trekkers and playing with Terry the dog who had abandoned the trekker he was with in favour of our tent. He proceeded to sleep in our tent porch all night and accompanied us on the trek until he got distracted by some cows and another group of trekkers. Our cooks and porters did us proud feeding us with unlimited chai and three course meals. The only problem was finding a suitable place to go to the toilet as the trees were a bit far away. I was slightly embarrassed to be caught peeing on the side of the mountain by an American trekker and his four year old son but the chance I’ll ever see them again is remote!

Our final day involved another three hour trek followed by another four hours to get back down the mountain. The day after, we headed to Manali main town on sore legs for some retail therapy. Blankets, a variety of wool products and Yak’s wool shawls have been obtained and are waiting for the next Delhi winter or my return to the UK depending on where I’ll be in December. The main part of Manali was full of Indian tourists so we were able to get some Indian food at a Dhaba. We managed to avoid the hawkers selling fake Ray-bans and men purveying the pinkest radioactive looking candy floss I’ve ever seen.   

We had to put up with a broken down bus on the way back and a replacement bus with no AC but got a 400 rupee refund when we got into Delhi sweating 17 hours later. The whole thing was brilliant and the chance for a break away couldn’t have come quick enough. Work as well as the weather has really hotted up with government proposals and training to be worked on. The opportunity to get away and enjoy some UK-like weather came at a good time and has meant a renewed sense of enthusiasm on my return. Now I need to plan my next trip away!   

Wot choo looking at?

So I’m more used to the auto drivers now. I even have a bit of a laugh with them when negotiating in Hindi. I still occasionally jump when car horns toot but mostly not. There are things to do for fun and places to relax. I’m settled and happy.

So why does the staring get to me sometimes? It’s like there is no one around who isn’t Indian other than me. And it’s not just men, its women too. Even when I’m going to work and my clothes are more Indian, it doesn’t make a difference.

Granted sometimes you can tell that the person staring may not be a Dilliwallah and could be from a rural village. You see everyone comes to Delhi to work. That’s why some sleep on the side of the street. Construction workers often build tent-like homes from bricks on a spare bit of pavement. You see whole families cooking, washing and living their lives side-by-side with the traffic.

So what gives me the right to get wound up? On the rare day that it does now I have a little chat to myself and think...ladyee, you are rich in comparison. Just deal with it.

Pic from http://blogs.sacbee.com/photos/2010/04/indias-national-census.html 

Lingua Franca

Learning two languages has been a challenge and one fraught with usual faux pas. In Hindi if you don’t roll your R enough in Kurta (shirt) it sounds like kutta (dog) and everyone giggles. I mostly use Hindi for auto drivers and vegetable shopping so I find that it hasn’t developed as much as I’d have liked though at times I sound quite good.

The other language I’ve been learning is Indian Sign Language (ISL) and it is one of the languages of my work here. In the UK we use British Sign Language (BSL) and I’m fluent. It’s a common myth that there is a universal sign language. Pretty much every country has its own sign language due to communities developing their own just like spoken languages developed. Sign Languages have been researched by linguists as early as the 1960s and proven to be full languages in their own right. As many different sign languages have similar grammatical features once you learn the vocabulary of another sign language it can become much simpler.

But there are still complications. As one of my first encounters with ISL was an international sign linguistics conference in Delhi I met many Deaf people from around the country. Trying to learn a new sign language is a bit difficult when you’re meeting people using five different dialects of ISL from as far apart as Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. Also some Deaf people prefer using the American finger spelling system. In Delhi they mostly use an alphabet similar to the British system. Finger spelling is used for spelling anything that doesn’t have a sign or does but you just don’t know it! It’s more complicated than that but I won’t go into that here. I find it gets interesting when people fingerspell Hindi words to me. Luckily these tend to be about food so I’ve obviously learnt all those words.

It was really hard at first trying to remember to stick to very visual elements of the language and to pick up the Indian signs along the way. Sometimes I have to work hard to decode the language if I don’t know what the subject is. Once I know the context it’s much easier and I just get it. I find myself wishing I could just sit around the office chatting to the Deaf staff and students but it’s a mix of Deaf, hearing interpreters and sadly, laptop time as work must be done.

The hardest things to learn are the real cultural signs that have been adopted into ISL. Many of these are slight head nods or certain movements of the hands. Some of these signs are used by hearing people on the street gesturing to each other that something isn’t possible or when they are agreeing to something. But it’s great when it all fits in and I love it when I sign in ISL without coding from the BSL first.

And just like Hindi I’ve had a faux pas in ISL. In my first month I asked a Deaf member of staff what the sign for toilet was. I spelt it out and asked for the sign. I wondered if it was appropriate but thought that’s an important sign to learn and I really wanted to find one at the time. He held out his first two fingers palm facing upwards and pulled them back. Not many people use toilet paper here which is why eating with your left hand is taboo. So in my naivety and surprise I thought the sign was a graphic description of what Indian people do in the bathroom. Anyway a month or so later whilst chatting with staff over lunch about travel arrangements I realised what the man thought I had spelt: ticket.     

Here’s some info is you want to know more about Sign Languages:

World Federation of the Deaf – Factsheet on Sign Language

Learn Indian Sign Language

UCL Mini-lecture: The truth about sign language

UCL Video - A visual people and a visual language

 

Pics:

Hindi Alphabet from Google Sites

International Women's Day from The Deaf Way Foundation