Aural Manuscripts: The Music of Letters!

Hearing impaired children find it difficult to learn to speak because they cannot hear properly. Therefore, despite their intelligence and thinking ability like normal children, they face many difficulties. Chinmay Joshi, is such a young boy who not only overcame this problem, but also acquired a master’s degree in Design. Using his education in Art, he showed young hearing impaired school children who were struggling with the same problems as him, an easy way to overcome these problems through art. We are releasing this very inspiring story in two parts in Chinmay Joshi’s own words.

Hello, I am Chinmay Kailas Joshi. I am sharing the story of my battle in overcoming hearing and speech impairment in my childhood and how I helped young school children the same when I became a trained artist.

I was very fond of painting since childhood. I began my art education with Applied Art Diploma at Raheja School of Art, Mumbai, and then in 2019, completed Post Graduation in Graphic Design from MIT, Pune. As a child, I had a hearing problem. When I was 3 years old, with an ENT specialist doctor’s advice my parents put me in Vikas Vidyalaya School located at Dadar, Mumbai which works for Hearing impaired children only. I had also faced speech and pronunciation issues since the first day, but I still remember the passion and hard work of the teachers paid off in this school. My parents made efforts day and night with my pronunciation, even becoming my friends, I remember that too. Gradually I began speaking well, and I could hear properly with a hearing aid. Thereafter I got admission in Saraswati Secondary School Marathi Medium in Thane. I did my further education up to class 10 there. But Vikas Vidyalaya, my first school ever gave me the confidence to speak normally. I was having hearing problems and due to that problem could not speak properly. My first school not only supported me for speaking & pronunciation during the school phase, but they continue to do so even now. That’s why my bond with this school is still strong.

This led me to think about how I could help the present generation of hearing-impaired students of the school. As a social work volunteer, I took a two-day Artistic creative workshop in the same school for Hearing impaired children in April 2023. My main motto was to create a valuable platform for creative expression and nonverbal communication through artistic activities. I see myself as a child among all children. And unknowingly, I had formed a loving and intimate bond with each student here. While teaching drawing to children in this workshop, I mainly thought about how the concept of ‘lettering’ in graphic design would be useful for the creative side of hearing-impaired children. 

Today I deliberately went to meet the children and met a boy named Chetan studying in the fifth standard. Seeing me in the class, he immediately came running toward me with his painting notebook. During this Summer vacation, Chetan thoroughly enjoyed the art of letterform activity taught in the workshop. Chetan came to me excited to show the fun he had with brush and paint. Not only did I teach the children how to draw various letters but also along with understanding those letterforms in a unique way in the workshop. Understanding this very precisely, Chetan drew letters in his drawing book. It was a pleasant shock for me. Those Ta, Pa, Ma, Na, Aa, Ba, Ka, Da letters were beatifically dancing on the paper of his notebook. Today I had this mind-blowing experience that hearing-impaired children can enjoy playing with various letters just like any other child.

It was asked to draw the letter Om (or Aum). It was enough to draw a curved line and give a dot on the top. Today when Chetan was asking, ‘Dada, Om has been drawn correctly, hasn’t it?’ While asking this, his mouth was unknowingly uttering Omkara which is beneficial for children’s speech therapy. The repetition of specific sounds, such as the “o” and “m” sounds in Om, can help children with their speech development and articulation. Also, the divine task of teaching the pronunciation of letters to hearing-impaired children would be easily achieved through this letter writing. It was then that I imagined how many times he must have said ‘Shree’ in his mind while drawing the Devnagari (Sanskrit) letter ‘Shree’. With this conscious effort to recite the letters taught in the Creative workshop, he has repeatedly done, practiced while at home during vacations. This is a sign of his intellectual and verbal art development.

Dancing letters drawn by Chetan

Those kids deprived of hearing ability at a very tender age are getting introduced to letters through art and in that process. I could imagine the echo of these letters in children’s minds by natural phenomenon. Very thoughtfully I could get into their mind and give it a shape so that they could pronounce it and practice it. Because of today’s scene, my sincere attempt with the Letterform experiment turned out to be truly successful.

Some letters beautifications by Chetan

Chetan’s painting notebook, his practice during the two months of vacation, and the joy that I could see on his face today gave me a new positive energy to continue to do new and exciting experiments through painting for these children.

I will continue to communicate with these children through innovative concepts through artistic activities. Every time I plan to design new experiments for teaching them, to improve their creative thought process and speaking skills. After such new experiments I will surely come to meet you in this column here to share those experiences.

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Chinmay Kailas Joshi

Author is Visual Designer and Brand Designer