Life as a CODA

Monica: Okay, namaskar, my name is Monica Punjabi Verma.

Monica: I am a proud CODA.

Monica: So, CODA is Children of Deaf Adults.

Monica: Mind it, Hearing Children of Deaf Adults, because if the children of deaf parents or deaf adults are deaf themselves, their first identity is that they are deaf.

Monica: So they are not called, uh, CODAS.

Monica:  Only the hearing children of either one or both deaf parents are called CODA (Children of Deaf Adults).

Monica: So me, I’m a CODA. Also I’d like to introduce to another CODA, who is also my husband, Mr. Gaurav Verma.

Monica: He is also a CODA; his father is deaf, my father is deaf too, he was born deaf.

Monica: But my mother is post-lingual deaf.

Monica: At the age of 8, she got typhoid due to severe illness and fever, and she lost her hearing ability.

Monica: She lost her hearing at the age of 8 or 9.

Monica: So she is post-lingual deaf, meaning she had learned some speech during her childhood.

Monica: She has a bit of broken, fragmented speech, but she cannot hear.

Monica: So this is uh, about me, about CODA.

Monica: Now, my upbringing, like you asked me, I don’t really remember how or what was different, but I would just like to sum it up by saying that whichever home or environment we are born into, it feels natural to us.

Monica: There’s nothing difficult or different because we can’t compare at that time.

Monica: But when we look at the outside world, see other people in other families, observe how their upbringing is, how their parents talk to them, and how our parents talk to us, that’s when we start differentiating, and understanding and making comparisons.

Monica: But for me, it was all natural because I consider sign language as my mother tongue since both my parents communicate with me in sign language.

Monica: My father used to only sign to me.

Monica: He still, we talk to each other in sign language, Indian sign language, and my mom used to speak and sign with me.

Monica: So that is a bit different.

Monica: So whenever I want to say something to my mom, in return, in reply, I will have to sign because she cannot hear.

Monica: But if my mom wants to say something or scold me, she’ll just turn and start speaking verbally.

Monica: But if I want to say, ‘Hey! Listen to me! Hear my side! Hear what I have to say’, then she would, if she would like to hear to me, listen to me, then she will look at me.

Otherwise, I’d have to keep tapping or trying to get her attention.

This is one difference, if your parents, whether father or mother, are deaf and born deaf, and if they do not have speech, then eye contact is very strong.

But where I compare my mumma, because she has speech, she’ll speak to us.

But when we want to say something to her, we need her total attention to us.

Monica: That is one difference.

Monica: And then, my both the parents do not use any assistive device.

Monica: They are pure signers.

Monica: They use sign language, Indian sign language.

Monica: And they are proud deaf.

*

Gaurav: So, hello, namaskar to everyone.

Gaurav: As Monica ji mentioned, my father is deaf and my mother is hearing.

The small difference in our upbringing was that if my mother wanted to say something, she would speak to us directly.

And we would respond verbally.

But between my father and me, there was a communication gap.

To bridge that gap, my mother acted as an intermediary because when I was younger, I wasn’t very good at sign language.

As a result, when my father wanted to say something, I couldn’t understand him.

So, at that time, we would call our mother and say, ‘Mom, what is Dad trying to say? What does he want to explain? What is he saying?’

Then Mom would interpret it and explain it to us.

By interpretation, I mean that she has known Dad since childhood, for years, and understood his language.

So, Mom would explain it to us.

And if I wanted to say something, and I had limitations because I wasn’t very good at signing, I would tell Mom, and then she would explain it to Dad.

Gaurav: So that was mainly the difference between the two of us.

Monica: So, experiences kept happening, but I’ve seen in most of the CODAs what happens, uhh, they are the decision makers maybe.

Monica: They are compelled to do that,  or they mature before their age.

Monica: Just, for instance, for example I’ll say if the doorbell rings, even if I’m on the second floor, I’m very sure that I have to be the one to go down and open the gate, whether it’s 12 or 1 at night, or 6 in the morning.

Monica:It’s only me who will hear the doorbell and go downstairs to do this.

Monica: Even if my parents are sitting in the hall or on the ground floor, back then, there were no flashlights, or we weren’t aware of them, they weren’t so easily available.

Monica: So, hearing the normal sound of the doorbell, it was always me or my brother who had to open the gate.

Monica: So, this is one thing.

Monica: When we went to hotels or went out to travel, when talking to people, though we weren’t professional interpreters, but still we act as an interpreter.

Monica: We served as the communication bridge.

Monica: We still do that.

Monica: In the beginning, we didn’t even know any ethics, hadn’t learned anything, hadn’t seen other interpreters.

Monica: What to do, what not to do?

Monica: How much to hide, how much to share?

Monica: There are ethics that say 100% interpretation should be done.

Monica: We had no knowledge of this until we studied the course.

Monica: So, if we went to a hotel, of course, Mom and Dad would tell me, “Order this for us”, and I’d be the one to talk to the waiter.

Monica: It became a habit, a habit developed over the years.

Monica: Then, when I got married to Gaurav, we went to a hotel, let’s say we went out to eat.

Monica: It was so inbuilt in me that I had to be the one to call the waiter and talk to him, asking, “Gaurav, what will you eat?” “What will I eat?” and I’d be the one to place the order. It was a habit.

Monica: Then Gaurav said, “Hey, hey, I’m here. I’ll place the order. I’m the husband, let me talk to the waiter”.

Monica: That’s when I realized it had become a habit.

Monica:  It’s still a habit.

Monica: While talking, I tend to sign a little, I tend to lean towards the deaf community.

Monica: Even though we’re professional interpreters today, our training teaches us not to be biased.

Monica: We have to stay neutral with both clients, with both teams.

Monica: But still, somewhere I’ve seen that CODAs, I have seen they have their, they decline towards uh, deaf people, deaf community.

Monica: So it is very obvious.

*

Monica: In 2002, as soon as I did my college, a letter came to our school saying that a course on Indian Sign Language was starting at Ali Yavar Jung National Institute of Speech & Hearing Disabilities, in Bandra, Mumbai

Monica: This title itself was very new to us,, including my parents who are deaf, who have founded this big school and college for the deaf children.

Monica: But even they weren’t familiar with the term ‘Indian Sign Language’.

Monica: So, they told me, since it was related to sign language, “We’ve been communicating through signs since childhood. You’ve just completed your graduation, go and do this course. Let’s see what is, what it is”.

Monica: When I went to Mumbai, the first thing I saw was a deaf teacher, and I thought, “A deaf teacher will teach us?”

Monica: We had never seen that before.

Monica: At our own school at that time, there were no deaf teachers.

Monica: Only for subjects like drawing or something like that, we had deaf teachers.

Monica: So, we got the chance to do a full-fledged course on sign language from a deaf teacher.

Monica: We learned about ethics in that course.

Monica: We learned that sign language has its own grammar.

Monica: Indian Sign Language has a complex grammar, which is different from American Sign Language, British Sign Language, or Japanese Sign Language – it’s different from these countries.

Monica: It is not common, any universal language, it is not like that.

Monica: Each country will have its own uh, different sign language, with its own complex grammar.

Monica: That’s what we learned there.

Monica: In this course, we learnt how to interpret

Monica: Let me tell you that before this, I had already been interpreting informally for so many years.

Monica: At the All India Deaf Art & Cultural Society, All India Sports Council, because we, from Indore Deaf Bilingual Academy, were connected to everyone.

Monica: We were connected to all the major associations.

Monica: So, wherever we went, they would say, “Monica, you are very active. Please come on stage and interpret.”

Monica: Whenever I knew I had to interpret, I used to think, “I need to be extra prepared for this. Extra bangles, extra earrings, makeup.”

Why? Because I’ll be going, I’m going to interpret on the stage.

Monica: It was only during this course that I realized that the interpreter should be very plain.

Monica: Because you don’t want to distract the attention of the audience or the deaf community with your accessories; you need to attract their attention to your signing and the message only.

That’s why your skills need to stand out, and your attire should be simple.

Monica: We had never heard about confidentiality before.

Monica: Before, I was very protective towards my parents or maybe our students at the school. If someone said something bad, I would like to omit it.

Monica: I wouldn’t convey it; I would not forward it ahead.

Monica: Even if he has said something to someone that I thought the hearing community wouldn’t be able to digest, I would omit it or say something else.

Monica: And I thought I am doing a good job.

Monica: I felt like I was doing the right thing.

Monica: I was building rapport, creating bonds between people.

Monica: But in interpreting ethics, we learned that, no, the interpreter has to convey the entire message exactly as it is, and that’s between them – you cannot intervene.

Monica: This is what I learned later, and still follow today.

Monica: But we didn’t have ready-made ethics in hand, and it is good in a way.

Rather, by continuing to interpret, by making mistakes, listening to our teachers’ scoldings, and my parents’ scoldings, today we’ve become stronger.

Monica: So that is a strong learning which is, which will be there with me, lifetime.

*

At Ali Yavar Jung, when I did this course in 2002, uh, luckily I became the first certified sign language, Indian sign language interpreter for India.

Monica: And, right after coming back to Indore in 2004, I thought I should start this course here, sign language interpreting and sign language teacher training, that is for deaf, and interpreting course for the hearing people.

Monica: We talked to RCI (Rehabilitation Council of India), and with their approval, we started the course.

Monica: And today, all over India we are providing successful deaf teachers, proficient interpreters and we are so happy to see them grow and doing this service for the society.

Monica: Uh, now for example, our children, Kairav aur Jenika.

Monica: Jenika being a girl, very talkative.

Monica: And she can differentiate very clearly at the age of 3 now, but she started to differentiate much early.

Monica: At the age of 2, she began to understand, who is deaf and who is hearing.

Monica: She signs to the deaf, she makes her eye contact, good eye contact with the deaf people, and she talks verbally to the hearing people.

Monica: She can differentiate between both, both of them.

Monica: And, she signs her poem, she makes her questions.

Monica: If she can’t find the right words verbally to express something, she’ll use a sign for it.

Monica: And this is so wonderful to see, and that is why in foreign countries, in developed countries, even the hearing, general hearing children, they learn sign language.

Monica: Infants are taught sign language at a very young age.

Monica: With Jenika, we saw that at one and a half to two years old, she was able to express herself through speech or through sign.

Monica: She would do a mixture of it, but she was able to communicate her thoughts.

Monica: And this is so powerful and we fail to understand this. Why aren’t we providing deaf people with sign language at the right age?

Monica: We are keeping them deprived of language, their own language, which is visual.

We don’t provide visual language to deaf children at the right time, which causes them to miss out on language in their critical period.

And then we think of new options where their time, their age, their education, their cognitive development, confidence, everything is lost.

Monica:  So, we have to really take care of that early intervention, in the right terms.

Monica: Thank you so much.