By Robert R. Schwarz
If we should ever feel burdened by the knowledge
of our weakness…let us remember what the Lord
told St. Paul during his time of trial :
"My graces
is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect
in
weakness ." (
from Conversations with God
by Francis Fernandez )
[Note: All spoken or
written words attributed to Bapin
in this article were
communicated either by the
tactile American
Sign Language or a Telebraille
machine. ]
[ last
of a two-part report ]
Summary of part 1 :
Anindya 'Bapin'
Bhattacharyya , age 8 and deaf and blind in one eye,
is captain of his
school's soccer team in India when one night
at a game victory celebration , he is blinded in
his remaining
eye by a jealous team member who throws hot coals in
his
face. His father
spends a year's salary to fly his son to America,
where Bapin has been given a scholarship to
a school for blind
students. Bapin goes
on to later to graduate from the University of
Arkansas and, in answer to his prayer for a "close friend ", is
given a Leader dog
for the blind by a Lions Club in
Michigan .
He and his "close
friend " are professionally trained, but only
after master and dog narrowly pass a grueling
test.
Several months passed before I again had contact with Bapin . I was speechless when he told me he had married ! Our "conversation " took place in a dismembered web of communication . Bapin and I (I'm on the phone in my home in Arlington Heights, Illinois ) are "speaking" to each other with help of " Interpreter 46A" (she's in Utah ) , Bapin and his wife,Sook Hee Choi (who's deaf ) are sitting together in his office in Berkeley , California. Also helping , in unfathomable ways , is Bapin's constant companion , his guide dog Walter, now lying under his master's desk. I am feeding questions to the interpreter; who is relaying them with sign language via Skype to Sook Hee, who then communicates my words to Bapin by pressing her fingers onto his palm, using tactile American Sign Language . Bapin replies to the interpreter with sign language for the deaf, which the interpreter then speaks to me. ( In previous face-to-face interviews with Bapin, we "conversed" by using a seven-key Telebraille machine; I'd type my questions, and Bapin, after reading them with his fingertips, would then type his replies. )
Bapin was now 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,"
Bapin's supervisor told me. In his Internet-posted
biography (http://www.bapin.info/
), Bapin wrote that this 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 person
worldwide who is hungry for golden opportunities." Dinah was never further
away than a tug on her harness .
 |
| Bapin, Hook See, and Navin ( as an infant) eating out. |
On April 4,
2008, in an email sent at 12:40 a.m. to more than 50 friends, Bapin related how
Dinah had collapsed a few hours ago due to a cancerous tumor around her heart."Today," his email read, " Dinah led me home from my office, which was 12 blocks away….she ate her dinner and soon thereafter collapsed. I am praying and hoping for a few more days Dinah can enjoy living." Bapin now was working in the San Francisco branch office of the Helen Keller Center.
Dinah spent a
few days in an animal hospital and then
was brought home. Another email followed from Bapin: "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 too long without
his master, he now flew monthly , from May
until October , from San Francisco to New
York to consult with a veterinarian there . He 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 Dinah, passed away
on October 14th. She collapsed at 3:45 p.m. as my co-worker James Feldman was
trying to make her stand up from her bed under his office 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 was to be cremated and her ashes put into an urn. "
Adjusting
to daily living without a Leader dog was slow and demanding for Bapin , who now navigated with a cane . Demand
for his technical skills at the Helen Keller Center increased with
his added role of trainer for deaf and blind people. But Bapin remained quick-witted and impatient with any project he undertook; 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 terribly missed Dinah, but his frequent travels as a spokesman for the Center
offered him a different kind of companionship. "When you are deaf-blind, technology is an ever-present companion ," he told me. "I
travel with a laptop for e-mail, phone and Internet access. I use a G.P.S.-equipped Braille 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 and the other, an L.C.D. screen with a keyboard for someone
who is sighted."
Still, he prayed again for a "close
friend."
How Love Had Bloomed for Bapin ( Thanks to Dinah ? )
How Love Had Bloomed for Bapin ( Thanks to Dinah ? )
 |
| The author interviewing Bapin via a Telebraille machine |
He probably thought that marriage between a deaf-blind man and
a deaf woman might be more of a risk
than that crisis moment at the Rochester intersection where he had to let go and let Dinah have her way. Then his email to me: "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…how I wanted Dinah to help me find a woman? Now, many
thanks to her for finding me a girl!"
Sook Hee accepted her fiance's invitation to accompany
him to India to celebrate his brother's birthday. That same year, the couple were married in the
San Francisco city hall. Eleven months later—on Sook Hee's birthday—Bapin
and wife became parents of a healthy son, Navin.
His
Shinning Moment in Las Vegas
A shining
moment of Bapin's professional life came on a stage in Las Vegas when he stood before several
hundred people at the first-ever
International Deaf-Blind Exposition . He was introduced as the
CEO of his own adaptive technology company , a not-for-profit firm which
provided instruments for deaf and blind
people to schools, government agencies, and businesses around the world . Unfortunately , Bapin could not hear the applause
As the applause for him continued, he felt the finger tips of his interpreter writing on his palm a
description of all that was happening. Then he reached down to the dog that had been sitting attentively at
his side and vigorously stroked it in
a display of gratitude. This was Walter,
a five-year-old , 100-pound Labrador Retriever, Bapin's new and constant companion.
Family Life and Precious Memories
It
is a May day, and Bapin , Navin , and
Walter leave their El Cerrito home and begin a five-minute walk to the train
station for a two-minute ride followed by a ten-minute walk to Navin's public school… " Our son is learning
English and Korean in his kindergarten class," Bapin explains on the telephone through his interpreter. " He's really smart and
loves technology. " Some days , Bapin and Walter might also ride a train for 35 minutes
to Bapin's office in Berkeley or
travel to Fremont where Bapin teaches a deaf-blind interpreting class at
Oholone College .
I once asked Bapin if Navin senses that his father is blind . " Sometimes he says to his mother, ' Dad can't see. ' But he knows to clasp my hand for me to get him something. He also knows he needs to guide me. He has good communication with us, and we make sure he is exposed to a lot of different experiences. With his mother, he uses sign language and is learning to speak to her in Korean . She reads his lips . " Bapin then paused to probe a thought : " I have a high priority for him . We teach him how to be respectful to his parents and other people. But I've got to figure out how to help him more. I have to make more time for him because I'm very busy and want to make a good relationship with him. He's a sweet little kid."
I once asked Bapin if Navin senses that his father is blind . " Sometimes he says to his mother, ' Dad can't see. ' But he knows to clasp my hand for me to get him something. He also knows he needs to guide me. He has good communication with us, and we make sure he is exposed to a lot of different experiences. With his mother, he uses sign language and is learning to speak to her in Korean . She reads his lips . " Bapin then paused to probe a thought : " I have a high priority for him . We teach him how to be respectful to his parents and other people. But I've got to figure out how to help him more. I have to make more time for him because I'm very busy and want to make a good relationship with him. He's a sweet little kid."
***
 |
| "I want to make full use of my skills and give of my self " |
These three well know the route , especially Walter, who has a built-in GPS. As instructed by his parents, Navin does his best not to stray ahead of Walter. Traffic is minimal at two of three intersections ; the group easily crosses all of them.
On weekends Hook See might travel to her husband's
office to manage his company's product distribution . But today she is likely in her backyard garden hoeing out weeds and uprooting
some early vegetables. She is planning for a special meal tonight to celebrate
the good news that her son will, for sure,
enter the first grade in September. The sight of a lone seagull flying away from a
neighbor's yard delights her ; she
recalls the pleasure of having seen her son
wave at a flying seagull here last summer
and then turning to ask his mother what kind of bird that was. Hook See did her best to name it .
***
For
that special dinner tonight, Sook Hee has
decorated the table with colorful , hand-stitched napkins and a table
cloth from her native county; they were gifts from her mother when she lived here
with Bapin and Hook See to help them through the challenges of their marriage
and her daughter's pregnancy. The dishware is equally colorful,
brought back from India by Bapin and Hook See when they visited Bapin's parents
.
Bapin
unlocks the front door , and he and
Walter enter . Bapin is bone-weary,
mind-weary. It's been a tedious, often hectic nine-hour day of communicating through many business matters via his Telebraille and interpreting all the tactile signing between him and a colleague.
There also was his two-hour delay in taking Walter outside to relieve himself
and that frantic hunt for that mislaid piece of alpha electronic
equipment an employee had placed in a remote section of the office, not
telling Bapin about it. Bapin's
only desire now is to release Walter from
his harness and then sink into his favorite
chair. No thinking, no communicating , no task !
I saw Bapin once like this after his first Leader dog had been washed out of training ; he was exhausted
from worrying about his final college exams
and the anxiety over the uncertainly of receiving a new Leader dog. I surmised that his current thoughts were similar to those he had when he had once expressed to me : "I need to learn to deal with people who don't understand that I don't need
them to pity me because I'm deaf and
blind or to treat me any less that any other human or say ,' Oh, he's not very
smart because he's blind and deaf. ' "
Bapin and his wife's
two-bedroom apartment is aged . "It is like any other house, " he
says . " It has a stove, oven,
microwave, oven. " Unlike most
homes, it has an alarm system which vibrates his pager when the phone or
doorbell rings or if there is an intruder.
This evening , his family greet him with tight hugs. Navin throws
his arms around his father's thigh .
Bapin caresses his head , then reaches down to release Walter from his harness , signaling
to the Lab that he's now off-duty .
Pizza and garden vegetables ala Korean— his very favorites--he smells, but he's too tired to even smile. " It is special tonight ," Hook See signs to him , "because our son is going soon to be first grader. We are happy and want to celebrate ."
Pizza and garden vegetables ala Korean— his very favorites--he smells, but he's too tired to even smile. " It is special tonight ," Hook See signs to him , "because our son is going soon to be first grader. We are happy and want to celebrate ."
Bapin
frowns. He has forgotten all about this event
and , worse, not remembering to bring home that
toy gift for his son. When Bapin later was detailing this scene to me , I sensed that that evening he was feeling poured out , no emotion left . He badly wants to be more alive for his family but is too weak to celebrate anything .
Hook See
and Navin tell him how beautiful the table setting is . Bapin sits down at the table and slowly glides a finger across the dinner
plate. He hopes his face will not show his emptiness .
The family
prays .
I had to ask myself if during this prayer, if this act of addressing God Who
had given Bapin him so much through the years, if Bapin thought of those times he had ignored God's prompts to forgive that rugby team boy who had blinded him in one eye at that camp fire , making him completely blind. ? I had once asked Bapin about that boy: " I've kind of let
it go, " he had said. " I never saw him again. I've never fully forgiven him but have looked at
the positive things that have come out of that experience. "
During
dinner, Bapin visibly becomes restored . He talks to his family , using
cheerful and affectionate words about them—and he appears very much aware of his
wife's presence . "To marry her would be a risk, " I recall him saying years ago. Then, a
little later in life he told me, " Bob, I found the right woman. She really takes
care of me. We cherish each other. Sometimes we'll have bad days and sometimes
good days. We really want to be better for our son."
During
our last interview, I asked him for opinions about the current American culture
and his own spirituality. "I feel
bad," he said, "that so many people have lost their moral values. Well, you
know, as we get closer to the end of the world, as the Bible says, we will
see more and more of that. Sometimes
I wish I could do things my way, but then God tells me: No, my way . I read the Bible, I pray before I go to bed
, but I can't attend church very often
because in California it's hard to find a good church that has interpreters.
"
Encouraging my friend to say more, he says, " I cherish life every day. I try to do the best things for other people, through God's help. But sometimes I feel I don't have enough power or energy . Then God helps me. " Two things make him happy: he says "family and exotic good food." And what saddens him ? " It's world hunger and people with disabilities who have to live with discrimination. "
Encouraging my friend to say more, he says, " I cherish life every day. I try to do the best things for other people, through God's help. But sometimes I feel I don't have enough power or energy . Then God helps me. " Two things make him happy: he says "family and exotic good food." And what saddens him ? " It's world hunger and people with disabilities who have to live with discrimination. "
Dinner
over, Bapin walks eagerly to a small adjoining room for an hour of woodwork; this time he's replacing a broken chair leg . After that , there's an unfinished
cabinet he's been constructing. He loves it.
***
 |
| Bapin , Hook See, and of course, Walter at the seashore |
Nowadays I still see Bapin at that dinner table with Hook See and
Navin , all using different forms of communication to express their love for each
other. This makes me think of that first Pentecost . And I remember Bapin telling me , " Sometimes when I have frustrations, Walter helps me
calm down and I tell myself, Get over it !
Then I feel more positive about life. " I hear Bapin say, " I want to give of
my self . " It reminds me of
an exhortation of a 19th
Century holy man cited at the bottom of
an old email Bapin had sent me : Don't let your life be sterile. Be useful .
The
light which Bapin's life today shines on the path through my twilight years reminds me of a title of a book written in the 1960's by a former chaplain of a renowned
rehabilitation center: LET GO AND LET GOD.
And so I conclude : that at that life-defining moment at that traffic-laden intersection in Rochester,
that's what a blind-deaf man had to do to see and to hear what God was willing to do for him.
 |
| With Dinah, his first "close friend " |
a request for another update of his
family life. As of this writing, I
have not heard from him. His
web address is http://www.bapin.info/]
THE END
All comments are
welcome.
© 2015 , 2020 Robert R.
Schwarz
On May 31, you can read all about
"the good life" of 17 cloistered nuns
living, working, and praying at the
Mississippi Abbey . When my wife
and I visited them, their abbess
told me , " we have the same ups
and downs as anyone. "
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