“I’m deaf” Prank

When someone tells you that they are deaf how will you react? Will you pity them, ignore them or find it odd talking to them? This story is completely about one such incident or prank.

I am geeth, a very naughty girl by birth. My mom used to tell me that when I was 6 months old I used to shed fake tears when I was asked to eat and used to smile immediately when a camera was brought in front of me. I loved playing pranks with friends. That became a habit and I not only fooled people on April first but on every single occasion I got a chance to. I still remember that day very well and that prank of mine brought the two of us here, where we are today.

That was the time when I was blogging like crazy; I was so passionate about writing. Every single hit on my page was so valuable to me and when hits were so valuable you can imagine how comments were. I used to monitor my blog status everyday. Suddenly, for a few days there was a visitor from London. The visitor from London was so regular in viewing my blog. I was wondering who that could be and there he was Mahesh, the man who brought me till here.  Mahesh had commented on few of my blogposts and with facebook it was not so tough for me to find that he was the one who visited so regularly from London.  

He was my senior in college but in our days, in our college, girls and boys were never let to talk to eachother.  So we never got a chance even to know the existance of eachother. But with the fast growing social networking sites and the internet culture it wasn’t that tough for us to become friends within short span of time. Not just him, I had few, a carefully selected few, internet friends whom I ve never seen in person before but had got a lot of mutual friends with. We spoke about different things for few days. He never got a chance to talk as I never closed my mouth; I mean I never gave a gap between my typings. Days passed and that night that brought us here, came.

I, for fun with a reason behind, told few of my online friends that I was deaf. There was this guy who was a musician who forgot the fact that I appreciated his music few minutes before and pitied me. There was a girl who did not know what to say and logged out. There was another guy who said he really couldn’t believe that I was deaf but later on sympathized. I did it for a reason. I wanted people to include the differentially abled within them and not treat them differently. I wanted to see how people react when they have a physically challenged friend. But more than that the fun involved and the words of embarassment from friends were the prome factor for me doing it.

Then the green light glowed, it was him on gtalk. I told him the same story that I was deaf. He did not believe it for a few minutes till I showed him my power of ‘acting’.  Then he went speechless or typeless for a few seconds. He said “I feel numb”. He asked me how it all happened and I told him that I had torn my eardrum by using improper ear bud. He was smart enough to ask me why the other ear couldn function if that was the case. I somehow managed by saying that the doctors treated the joint of both the drums and that I was under treatment. I expected one of the few example reactions quoted above from him also.

“I googled” , he typed

Before he could type more I asked “Whether such things can happen and if I am lying?”

He typed “No.See this” and he sent a link.

The link had a yahoo answers page which had the question that changed our lives forever, in bold letters on top. “Can deafness be cure?” I had tears in my eyes. I did not have the courage to tell him I could hear. I really wished that I could have been deaf, for a second, or I can say even till today. I keep telling him this every single time I start talking about that day. He also told me that he made a folder that had the contents that is available on web about curing deafness. I was simply amazed. I told him that I could hear and it was all a campaign in my own way to inject “inclusion” in the minds of people I knew. He did not get wild and took it very lightly.

This incident made him think actually made us think a lot about physicllay challenged. He was a CEO of a very big IT firm. He started a school for physically challenged with his own money and started helping the differentially abled as much as he could. He also started something called ‘Challenge foundation’ and made me a part of it. We still remain good friends and we are happy that the spark hit us that night. Today Challenge has brought a lot of doctors, engineers, teachers and what not. Both of us are in our 80s and we are content with our lives.