Ability in disability

Amarjot Kaur

Apart from the ‘disability’ tag, what the two Chandigarh-based women, Priyanka Saini and Shruti Hora, share in common is a National Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities they will receive today, December 3—the International Day of People with Disability. 

Priyanka and Shruti will receive the award by the President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, in the category of Best Employees/Self Employed with Disabilities, at Delhi’s Vigyan Bhawan.

As The Tribune Life+Style explores the course of their success, here’s what makes them stand among 67 other disabled persons, from across the country. Here’s the story of their resilience that gave a limitless flight to their dreams, despite their limitations.

He‘art’ of the matter

Priyanka

The youngest of five siblings born to a couple in village Jogiara, Darbhangar district of Bihar, 34-year-old Priyanka is hearing and speech impaired since birth. She works as a facilitator at the Tech Mahindra Smart+ Training Centre for Persons with Disabilities, located on the premises of National Institute of Technical Teachers Training and Research (NITTTR), Sector 26.

At NITTTR, Priyanka’s father-in-law, JS Saini, professor and head of Entrepreneurship Development and Industrial Coordination Department and at the Centre for Physically Challenged Persons and NSQF Facilitation Unit of NITTTR, becomes an interpreter for his daughter-in-law.

“I have actively been engaged with issues concerning disabilities. It was in 2014, when NITTTR collaborated with the Delhi-headquartered NGO Sarthak Educational Trust to establish the Tech Mahindra Smart+ Training Centre. Priyanka had done her masters in Fine Arts, so I suggested her name to the Sarthak Trust. They interviewed her and she was selected to train hearing and speech impaired people,” he says. 

Besides basic computer programs, Priyanka teaches sign language, soft skills, English grammar, hospitality and retail training to the students at the Centre. “Since 2014, 783 disabled students have studied here, out of which 309 were hearing impaired. Most students I taught are now working at Elante, Gillard, Cafe Coffee Day, and KFC too,” she smiles.

While interpreting Priyanka’s sign language and muffled words, uttered from a stiff jaw, Saini tells us that Priyanka’s parents abandoned her soon after they realised that she was deaf. “I was brought up by my maternal uncle and aunt, but the biggest challenge for me was that of attaining quality education as there aren’t enough schools for us. Studying in an inclusive school can be a little tough, but it builds our confidence to interact with people who aren’t deaf,” she opines.  

To the headstrong hedonist

Shruti Hora

Ten years Priyanka’s senior in the teaching line, 44-year-old Shruti Hora, who was born and raised in Ludhiana, holds a PhD degree in music and is an associate professor at the Post Graduate Government College for Girls, Sector 11. Hora is visually impaired. “I studied music at Ludhiana’s Pracheen Kala Kendra as I was always fond of music. The Punjab Board made a provision for me when I was appearing for my Class X exams; they let me study music instead of science and maths,” she says.

Raised in a joint family, with a brother who is now a doctor, Hora, like Priyanka, did not give way to exclusive education either. “I would record my lessons and my mother would read from the books to me. I give her all the credit for where I stand today,” she adds.

In the college where she teaches, Hora likes to conduct group discussions to engage her students. Trained in sitar instrumental, she also credits her success to the proverbial wisdom—practice makes perfect. “My gurus helped me; they knew I had a sharp ear, but I never underestimated the worth of riyaaz. When people made fun of my blindness, which was very rare, it would only make my resolve to become something in life even stronger,” she says.

A mother, and a wife, Hora extends her vote of gratitude to her husband too. She remembers the words that had melted her heart: “I asked him why he’d marry a blind woman like me and he replied, ‘You could have gone blind even after marriage, would that mean I would have left you? Never...” Well, love itself is blind, they say! But to Hora, it was an eye-opener. [email protected]