By Robert R. Schwarz
"For we walk by faith, not by sight"... The apostle Paul (2 Corinthians: 5:7)
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched but just felt in the heart….I am blind, I am deaf—yet I see—yet I hear" ... Helen Keller
"Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him"...Jesus explaining the real reason why the man had been blind from birth (John 9:3)
[Note: All words attributed to Bapin in this article were communicated either by the tactile American Sign Language or by a seven-key TeleBraille machine Bapin used during interviews with Bob Schwarz.]
The 26-year-old man from India kneeled to pray in his dorm room at the University of Arkansas. He was blind and deaf and, unbelievably, soon to graduate from the University of Arkansas with a B.A. degree. From there he was to become an inventor of sophisticated electronic equipment for other blind and deaf people and then to fall in love with a deaf Korean woman whom he married and bore him a son.
But all he wanted now was a companion. Friendly students were always at his side, ineptly signaling their willingness to escort him here and there or perform some other favor, but no one went the distance of true friendship. So he prayed for a close friend.
Anindya "Bapin" Bhattacharyya was born deaf in the India farmland village of Telari, 20 miles south of Calcutta . Here, where paved roads and vehicles were absent, 85 per cent of the population was illiterate and lived in poverty. Fortunately, his parents were well educated teachers and knew how to handle his deafness. "At age two, "Bapin writes," my mother taught me how to speak Bengali, my native language. She used many artistic ways to describe how to make the sound of a letter by moving her lips and had me feel her throat for vibrations."
When six, Bapin was placed in a public school classroom. "I faced many difficulties at this school because the pupils took advantage and made a mockery of my deafness. They would guffaw at my misunderstandings while I struggled to lip-read and comprehend what the teachers were saying. The teachers also were not aware of the situation and let it continue. At that time I was too innocent to deal with the situation, therefore, I became intolerant and behaved naughtily. The school got disgusted and expelled me after six months. I headed back home in the village."
Two tragic events followed which were to prepare Bapin for his arduous journey to adulthood. He was blinded in one eye from an accident while digging soil and was soon to lose his other eye by a cruel act of a rugby team mate who had become inflamed with jealously over Bapin's being appointed team captain. As the two boys sat around a potato roast one night, the teammate scooped up hot ashes and threw them in Bapin's face. Bapin was confined to his home for four years and gradually became totally blind.
"My blindness frustrated me because I did not understand how to express my problems, and became angry and mischievous," Bapin recalls. "I often would sneak out of the house to make trouble while everyone was having a siesta. I would sometimes throw hay through my neighbors' windows. Other times I would lock their doors from outside by hooking up chains, which meant no one could come out. Although I was troubled as a child, I found a little peace in creative expression. I developed a hobby by using manual skills to make statues of Indian gods and goddesses through woodworking and ceramics. Since my mother was a talented artist, she always offered to paint these statues for me."
The family for four years searched unsuccessfully in India for a school equipped to educate a bind- deaf-blind student. Then, through the efforts of a persevering father and an aunt, Bapin in 1983 received a scholarship for the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts. Airline tickets for father and son to America cost the father one full year's salary. My father accompanied me to be my translator from English to Bengali. All I knew was English alphabet letters and a few words such as 'I love you,' 'I want to go to the bathroom,' 'I want to eat,' and, 'I want to go to sleep.' The enormous step in taking a journey halfway around the globe was an awakening adventure, "Bapin later wrote in a biography. "My life was completely changed--from a life of darkness to light--when I came to Perkins.
"Upon arrival at Perkins and entering my dorm, the first question I was asked, was whether I wanted to live alone or with my father. I told my father that I wanted to live by myself to force myself to learn English. From the next day on, I rolled up my sleeves to learn English, Braille, and sign language at the same time. My father also learned Braille and took courses to acquire new knowledge about how to work with deaf-blind children.
"I started to see a different world by meeting other students who also were deaf-blind, which encouraged me to adjust to my deaf-blindness. I never imagined from a village with a large population living in poverty and illiteracy that there could also be people in similar situations as myself who existed on this earth. The only drawback was that I could not communicate easily with these deaf-blind students because of my limited sign language."
Bapin's father agreed to return to India and leave his son under the guardianship of Bapin's English teacher. During Bapin's years at Perkins and a subsequent year at Gallaudet University , a liberal arts university in Washington, D.C., Bapin developed a strong interest in helping blind and deaf people . "My enthusiasm to achieve higher education also continued," he said. A few years later he became the first deaf-blind student at the University of Arkansas, which even before the Americans with Disabilities Act, had been committed to providing equal access and opportunities for students with disabilities. "I persuaded the university to hook up Braille in the computer lab."
But now, a few years later, when he is kneeling in his college dorm and asking God to send him a companion, Bapin's prayer is repeatedly being compromised. He fears that his Hindu parents in India would be profoundly angered when—and if—he told them he had recently converted to Christianity. He is also perturbed because of his inability to forgive the boy who had blinded him years ago.
Two past scenes rush at him… he is a boy talking about God with his Hindu family…Then in college… he is seeing those two boys from the church in Little Rock who stop him for a moment of fellowship, and he tells him them of his dilemma with his parents; they take him to lunch and everybody talks for hours; he hears them say, "God is first before anything else. Don't worry about your parents. God will work in their hearts, too."
Two Sundays later, when the pastor invited anyone who wanted to "accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of their life" to come up to the altar, Bapin walked up.
"It changed my life overnight," he said. "There was so much peace. I began to pray, to ask God to 'see' and 'hear' for me."
A few months after Bapin made his "altar call", he forgave the soccer teammate who blinded him. This was followed by his parents rejoicing when he told them that Jesus was now his "new Father in heaven." All that remained was the companion.
Several weeks before Bapin was to take final exams at the U. of A., he learned that his outstanding student work had earned him a scholarship from the National Federation of the Blind, and that caught the attention of a local Lions Club, a member of the world's foremost supporter of Leader ("seeing eye") dogs. Bapin's new friend would be a yellow Labrador retriever named Chica, a $19,000 gift from the Leader Dog School for the Blind in Rochester, Michigan. This gift required, however, that both dog and master successfully went through 24 days of arduous training. Bapin was ecstatic. But no one, not even the school's expert trainers, expected the kind of setback that would test Bapin's mettle.
I first met Bapin and Chica in the school's dining room. I was there on a magazine assignment for "The Lion," the official publication of Lions Clubs International, which had employed me for 14 years as manager of leadership development. There were seven or eight round tables at which sat 22 blind men and women from all over the United States and several from Spain. At their feet quietly lay their Leader dogs, heads between paws. Several hours earlier in another room, these people had gone through a gamut of emotions as their dogs were led to their side and, for the first time, they leaned down to pet their new companion. One blind man went to a piano and began playing as his dog lay at his feet.
Bapin, carrying his Telebraille, and I went to outside to get acquainted. He had jet black hair and a forehead prematurely bald; he stood no more that five-foot-eight and walked briskly and, for someone without sight or hearing, with exceptional confidence. (An interpreter for 125 blind students later commented, "Bapin can read Braille as fast as a secretary can type, whereas 85 percent of blind Americans can't read Braille."
We were joined by Keith MacGregor who, I was told, was likely the world's only guide dog trainer in the world skilled in tactile signing for the blind-deaf. Keith communicated with Bapin by grabbing Bapin's outstretched palm as a notepad and then pressing press hard with a finger to "write" word signs. At the end of a day of signing, Keith's shoulder was in pain—a common occurrence for tactile signers—forcing him to call in a substitute interpreter for Bapin.
Training for Bapin and Chica begins shortly after 6 a.m. when all dogs are taken to an outdoor run to relieve themselves. The dogs have already received a several weeks of preliminary training and a exhaustive screening process that began soon after they were whelped. An hour later, a training cadre of 72 men and women attired in khaki shorts maneuver students and dogs out to the 14-acre school complex that had evolved from a 1939 one-farm-house operation.
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| Bapin and Dinah during training at the Leader Dog school |
I asked Keith if Chica knew that Bapin is blind?" He said he believed that Leader dogs know something is different about someone who can't see. "The dogs are used to making eye contact with the person who raised them for several months," he said. "When we trainers here turn out backs on them, they bark. When we turn around and face them, they stop."
Except for meals and some R&R time for Chica, Bapin and Ken train until the day concludes with a lecture at 8 p.m. Everyone rests on Sunday. Students may go to church, but without their dogs.
Six days into the training, Bapin begins to worry whether he has passed those final college exams he took only ten days ago. (He will pass them). A malfunction in his Telebraille adds to the stress. He doesn't know he's about to face a major crisis.
Keith notices that Chica is refusing to lead! And Bapin appears as if he's not sure what Chica wants to do. He—mistakenly --expects her to walk in a straight line like a robot and never to pause to sniff something.
Keith speculates --but doesn't tell Bapin—that Chica is either over-reacting to the strangeness of human deafness or that she is still attached to Keith, who was her preparatory trainer for five months before Bapin arrived. Solving this problem is urgent, for both dog and master are now facing being washed out.
Two days later Keith learns that Chica is Bapin's very first experience with any dog! Bonding with a dog is emotionally alien to the young man from the Indian village. "I was slow to understand what a relationship to a dog really means," Bapin later explained. "I had never felt this kind of emotion for an animal. I found myself loving her, yet I didn't keep a balance between this love and her need for discipline."
But the insight came too late. Chica was washed out and likely would never again be trained to be a Leader dog. "I was hit hard and I missed her," Bapin recalled.
Nevertheless, Bapin waxed joyous when the school, realizing the uniqueness of this training failure, decided to give Bapin one more opportunity. Chica was replaced with Dinah, a 21-month-old, 64-pound yellow Lab; the school had received her three months ago from an individual who had diligently raised her as part of the school's volunteer puppy program.
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| Bapin , Keith McGregor, Dinah |
Yet more is required before these two can graduate. Up to and including the final test, Keith will watch for any sign of dog and master being unable to trust one another. "This trust," Keith says, "can be a life or death issue when, for example, both are about to cross a busy street intersection but their instincts are demanding different behaviors. Trust can be difficult enough for a blind person, but for a person who is also deaf, it sometimes seems impossible." Keith, who has sized up Bapin as "a very independent person," hints that he will have to fail both Bapin and Dinah if they can't develop this mutual trust.
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| Bapin and Dinah take a walk in Rochester, Michigan |
The two now approach a busy intersection. Keith has purposely not told Bapin that this intersection crossing, unlike the right angle crossings at school with which Bapin and Dinah have been trained, must be crossed diagonally.
Dinah halts at the curb and sits. Bapin reflexively pauses for a few seconds then commandingly tugs the halter for Dinah to proceed straight ahead. Dinah refuses; she tugs to the right, towards the diagonal crossing. Bapin firmly pulls her back. Keith winces at this clash of wills; he has invested much with this pair night and day for more than three weeks. It would be for naught if Bapin got his way with the dog.
For a nervous, brief moment, I recall one afternoon when I observed seeing Bapin and Dinah both taking a nap on the young man’s bed. Had Bapin again allowed affection for his companion to compromise his primary role as master?
Again Dinah tugs to the right. Bapin obviously believes Dinah is confused, and that he must do the leading. For a long moment, Keith and I watch as Bapin seems to be frozen in thought. We do not breathe.
Then, as the professional Leader dog she had been trained to be, once more Dinah leads Bapin towards the diagonal crossing. Bapin follows her.
***
Nine months later, Bapin was working full-time as an adaptive technology instructor at the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths & Adults in Sands Point, New York. "He can take a computer apart and put it back together again," a supervisor told me during a follow up conversation I had with Bapin. In his internet-posted biography, Bapin wrote that it was his dream job, " a perfect opportunity for me to move ahead in my life where I can bring myself at the hands of every deaf-blind worldwide who is hungry for golden opportunities."Bapin now attended parties, took buses here and there to visit friends, and shopped. Dinah was never further than a tug on the halter. (On one of Bapin's Facebook wall, half of his 146 listed friends posted him a "happy birthday" greeting.)
I didn't hear from Bapin until I emailed him eight years later, asking for an update on his life and, of course, Dinah's . "Right now," he replied, "Dinah is resting on her bed in one corner of my office." The two had just returned on a jet from a conference in Los Angeles. "She loves flying all the time. She even went to Kolkata (Calcutta) with me twice, and all of my family members loved having her there. Dinah is now ten and a half and loves going to work all the time, so I don’t know when she will be ready to retire." He also mentioned that the dog's spleen had to be removed because of a benign tumor.
On April 4, 2008, in an email sent at 12:40 a.m. to more than 50 friends, Bapin, now working in the San Francisco branch office of the Helen Keller Center, related how Dinah had collapsed a few hours ago due to a cancerous tumor around her heart. "Today, Dinah led me home from my office, which was l2 blocks away….she ate her dinner and soon thereafter collapsed. I am praying and hoping for a few more days Dinah can enjoy living."
Dinah spent a few days in an animal hospital, and then was brought home. Another email followed: "I came home during lunchtime to check on her. Dinah still greets me when I get home, and she gets excited with the tail wagging hard, the usual Dinah. I took her outside for her to do her business. She dragged me to walk around an entire block…"
Dinah's veterinarian said the dog could collapse at any time. Her medical bills so far had personally cost Bapin $3,500. Wanting his companion to live out her last days in a familiar environment, Bapin took Dinah back to New York to stay with his former landlord and co-worker at the Helen Keller Center. To avoid Dinah being left without him too long, Bapin, from May until October, flew monthly from San Francisco to consult with the veterinarian. Buoyed by an prognosis, Bapin emailed me on May 30: "She has not yet shown any decline in the guiding skills as she tries to guide me even on her leash when I am using my cane."
In October, Bapin posted on his webpage: "It's very sad to let you know that Bapin's
pet daughter, Dinah, passed away on October 14th. She collapsed at 3:45 p.m. as my co-worker James Feldmann was trying to make her stand up from her bed under his office's desk. She would not stand up and needed to be lifted onto a cart by two other colleagues, John Baroncelli and Robert Pena. She was taken to Robert's car and driven away to the Animal Medical Center in NYC. The doctors found that the fluids in the sac around Dinah's heart filled up again. They had to flush out the fluids but 15 minutes later the fluids filled up fast. There was no other option to curing the tumor and Dinah's primary doctor recommended to have her put down. James and Robert were at the hospital with Dinah and I was in my office here in San Francisco. I was on the phone with the doctor with an interpreter and we talked for a long time. We all decided to let Dinah go at 6:30 p.m. Dinah will be cremated and her ashes will be put into an urn."
***
Physically adjusting to daily living without a Leader dog was slow, difficult and especially demanding for Bapin , for he now navigated solely with a cane; and demand for his technical skills at the Center increased with his new role as a trainer for deaf and blind people. Among his several innovations at the Center were Braille-capturing radio instruments that emitted emergency notices on National Public Radio to individuals like himself.
He continued to travel extensively—with a new kind of companionship: "When you are deaf-blind, technology is an ever-present companion. I travel with a laptop for e-mail, phone and Internet access. I use a G.P.S.-equipped Braille Note note-taker to get information about my surroundings. To communicate with others, I have a Screen Braille Communicator with two sides: one in Braille, which I can read; the other an L.C.D. screen with a keyboard, for someone who is sighted."
At several of the conferences to which Bapin was invited to test his new adaptive technology products, he had been running into a deaf Korean woman, Sook Hee Choi. "We were developing feelings for each other," Bapin told me over the telephone. Then came the big news in an email: "I am now engaged to get married. Sook Hee lives in San Francisco and works at the Lighthouse for the Blind there, and she is a wonderful woman! A wedding date has yet to be fixed. Do you remember that I told you at the Leader Dog School for the Blind that I wanted Dinah to help me find a woman? Now, many thanks to her for finding me a girl!"
Sook Hee accepted Bapin's invitation to accompany him to India to celebrate his brother's birthday. That same year, the couple were married in San Francisco city hall. Eleven months later—on Sook Hee's birthday-- Bapin became a father. They named their son Navin.
***
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| Bapin, Navin, and Sook Hee eating out |
After a five-minute walk from the station, he is at the front door of his "very old" two-bedroom apartment. There he is met by his 42-year-old wife and two-year-old toddler Navin, who, according to Bapin, speaks more than a little of English, Korean, and Bengali, his father's native tongue. Hook See's mother lives with them.
"It is like any other house, "Bapin will say, "…stove, oven, microwave oven." There is an alarm system which vibrates his pager when the phone or doorbell rings or if there is an intruder. Bapin may spend some time before dinner doing woodwork, such as the laundry room cabinets he made. Or, he, Hook See, and Navin might go pick vegetables from their backyard garden. Or the family may before bedtime entertain their wish to someday take an ocean cruise.
On Sundays, Bapin and his Catholic-raised wife may go to an interdenominational church service; churches are at an inconvenient distance from their home.
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| The author interviewing Bapin during the Leader Dog training |
During one of our interviews, Bapin remarked, "No one of us should give up on anything, but rather have strong faith in God and ourselves. I have a motto I'd like to share: Persistence, Ambition, and Enthusiasm…You will be surprised at how much progress you will make no matter what the difficulties or weaknesses are." Whatever guides Bapin through his visual darkness and silent world was stated loudly and with enlightened vision in an early email to me: "I am a blind- deaf person and I want to make full use of my skills and give of myself." At the bottom of his message was a quote from the founder of Opus Dei, Saint Josemaria Escrivá: Don't let your life be sterile. Be useful.
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