Jalandhar: Hearing-impaired boy fights all odds, scores 92% in Class X

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, August 9

Even though learning from home during the pandemic was difficult for almost all students, it came out to be a huge trouble for Ananya Anand, a hearing challenged boy who has just passed out Class X from CBSE-affiliated Cambridge International Co-Ed School. But he beat all odds to score 92 per cent and scoring cent per cent in two subjects – Food Technology and Painting.

Since Ananya uses cochlear implants and tries to comprehend a lot from the lip movement of the speaker, attending online classes on using audio mode became very difficult for him. Attending a normal school since the beginning, it was an entirely different situation for him that too at a point when his studies were at a crucial juncture.

It was at this moment that he needed a lot of help from his mother and mentor Priti Anand. She sat with him for all his online school and tuition classes so that she could clearly grasp what was being said and later explain it all to her son. “My son is very intelligent as far as mathematics calculations and logical understanding are involved. He scored 98 per cent in IT and 91 in mathematics. His only problem is language and its expression. He scored less in English. We got him exemption from taking the second language, science and social studies and hence we had to get his subjects changed”, says Priti, who resides at Vijay Nagar here.

She shared how the last few days were very worrisome for her. “On August 3, when the CBSE declared the Class X results, we too had some anxious moments. We knew that the result would be good and we opened the portal with much excitement. We tried to re-open it several times but his result was not showing. We approached the school authorities and they asked us to contact the CBSE office. They told us that there could be a problem in proper uploading of his marks from the school side and that we should get it all clarified from the school. The school then sent the CBSE office a mail. It all took some days and finally we got Ananya’s result day before.”

Priti says that Ananya has already taken admission in Class XII in humanities stream with web development as a subject. “My son is very fond of using gadgets and is very good at it. He wants to pursue web development and painting as his passions. But he ultimately wants to join his father Lalit Anand’s business in sports goods trading. He says that whenever he will get into it, he will re-organise it in a better way and make it grow further,” she said pointing to her son’s immaculately arranged study table and book shelf. “He is himself very organised and disciplined and cannot see anyone else creating mess around,” she points out.

Priti says that she is able to devote her full day to Ananya owing to a huge support of his grandparents Baldev Raj Anand and Vinod Rani Anand. “Ananya was 10 months old when we got to know of his hearing problem. We had to take him around to doctors and get the cochlear implants done. Ever since they both have taken a very good care of him and even ensured that there is a full-time helper at home so that I can spend all my time with my son. We had decided that we will send him to a normal school. Cambridge School, which has special educators and arrangement for taking special one-to-one classes also for the children, also came as a big boost,” she acknowledged the efforts of the authorities. Ananya has a sister, Mannat, who is a year younger to him. Both share a special bonding.