The summer heat in Baroda is intolerable. A sudden power cut prevents even the hot air from being circulated by the solitary fan in each classroom. But there seems to be no trace of discomfort on the lively features of the petite woman clad in a crisp indigo-blue patterned handloom sari. Tiny rivulets of perspiration dot her brow, but the children she is speaking to don’t notice them; they are concentrating hard on her words of wisdom. Nisha Grover enunciates each word and demonstrates what she is teaching with a puppet. She is blissfully unaware of the contortions her face assumes as she moves her jaw muscles to help the kids recognise how the sound of a word would appear.

These children hailing from poor families are hearing-impaired. Grover is intent on teaching them how to overcome their disability and become self-reliant through a combination of lip-reading, speaking and sign language. “We work on communication skills and follow what we call the total communication mode, so the children are speaking, lip-reading and learning to sign. Teaching the deaf elicits a lot of strong opinions. Some people say don’t teach through signs, some advocate teaching an oral language through signs,” reveals Grover.

Over the years, she has learnt to follow what best serves the individual child. “If you’re integrating them, you have to give them oral language skills,” she elaborates. “We start with that and we also use written communication. Some of the children are completely deaf or they come from families who can’t really support the programme. Many parents are not literate, so it becomes difficult for them to even read a note we have sent. I really think illiteracy is a major disability.”

Grover has been training and working in this field for over three decades. After graduating from Calcutta University, she obtained a diploma from the Education Audiology and Research Centre (EAR) in Mumbai to work with deaf children and then taught at the Oral School for Deaf Children in Kolkata from 1974 to 1978. “I just wandered into this field, but learnt a lot working with kids. At first I wasn’t clear about what deaf education is but when I trained, I found it interesting. It is all about the language. We keep abreast of the latest research on the application devices we work with and learn how language is acquired, so it’s quite an exciting area.”

Born in a rented shed in 1988, the Akshar Centre for Hearing Impaired Children has grown by leaps and bounds. “We began without any infrastructure, money or teachers. Some of my friends pitched in at that point,” she recalls gratefully. The trust was registered in 1989. For the next two years Grover didn’t charge any fees. “We found that not charging fees meant there was a lot of absenteeism, so we said anybody who can pay Rs 100 a month should pay,” she explains. That system carries on till today and Akshar somehow finds the goodwill and funding to sustain itself. When confusion about ownership necessitated that they move out of the shed, Grover approached the army. “I went to the Commandant of the Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (EME) and said he will have to help us as I had 30 kids and no money. He was kind and helped us become part of the army welfare organisation. They gave us a bungalow with eight rooms. We were there from 1991 till 1997.”

While that space worked well, they outgrew it when the numbers eventually increased. That is when Grover approached the municipal school authority, who willingly offered them part of the premises under its purview. A couple of years ago, the rapidly-growing centre got three additional rooms. While they don’t pay rent, they have to foot the bills for electricity and other incidentals. “It’s stressful,” laments Grover, “because you don’t know whether you will have the space the next year or not.” The cloud that hangs overhead has a silver lining, though, for the government has granted Akshar land on the outskirts of the city. Husband and architect Karan Grover (who is also the managing trustee) has lost no time in designing the centre. Thanks to zealous volunteers and generous well-wishers, they have also managed to collect enough money to start building the centre.

Meanwhile, the children are blossoming under the nurturing care of the trust. The Early Intervention Programme, supported by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation for the past two years, starts the training process as soon as diagnosis is in place. “Initially, it’s a one-to-one session with the child, parents and the teacher. We show parents how to work with the child, develop speech and use hearing aids.” Grover started this programme as soon as she began work. “Over the years, Akshar has integrated around 42 children in schools. Initially, we give them skills and then gradually push them into a regular school. Some of them get absorbed into the system.”

To those superficially acquainted with Grover only through the social circuit she frequents as the wife of architect and art impresario Karan Grover, the avatar of the dedicated principal of Akshar, may come as a surprise. Though poles apart, she straddles both worlds with aplomb, displaying her commitment to the noble cause and her family. “I think one contributes to the other,” she muses. “I learn a lot in the school, while interacting with teachers and children. I communicate with parents who come from difficult backgrounds. At home, I’ve learnt a lot from Karan as well – how to run places, strive for excellence and push the envelope.”
Grover obviously learnt her lessons well – from five children whom she started teaching from her home in Baroda after her marriage, her pupils have increased manifold. The centre has found temporary refuge in a municipal school in the heart of Baroda. Reminiscing about the early days, she recounts how it began to get difficult to work from home as her older son seemed to be resentful that his space was being taken over. “When Kabir was one year old, he would come and sit on my lap and not let me work,” she laughs. While the 21-year-old is now doing his business studies in Wales, the younger 17-year-old Ishaan has just completed school and is a keen footballer.

Commendably, Grover has been able to love and nurture her family without losing sight of her goal. Content that her offspring have found their own feet, she works with renewed energy on giving shape to her dream. Among the facilities planned at the new building are classrooms designed for the hearing-impaired programme, an audiology clinic for impairment assessment and fitting of hearing aids, private spaces for the infant-parent programme, classrooms for training teachers and a laboratory.
The trust is also planning to set up a cell and make solar-powered batteries for hearing aids. This would run alongside a low-cost mould facility, since a child’s ear size changes with age and the moulds need to be altered accordingly for the proper working of the hearing aids. The centre has been structuring its syllabi to meet the Gujarat Board specifications so that these children do not face a problem when they enter regular schools. Grover wants to create and publish textbooks so that they are easily accessible to schools for the hearing-impaired. One of the trust’s long-term plans is to extend its work to the rural areas. This would include identification of hearing impairment, fitting of low-cost hearing aids and training of mothers with hearing-impaired children.

Once you discover her antecedents, it is not surprising that the Christian-by-birth-and-upbringing Nisha Paul (her maiden name) has chosen to make a difference to society through her work. Her mother was a volunteer with Mother Teresa in Kolkata. It’s probably the same influence that prompted her younger sister to change track from advertising at the age of 40 to work with Action for Autism in Delhi. “There have been a lot of family influences,” she admits. “My grandmother used to read a lot to the blind. I felt that if I can do something, then I should.”
That Grover has been able to balance family and social obligations in tandem with her work illustrates her management skills. Her secret lies in taking each day as it comes. “I look at only one crisis at a time. I’ve trained myself to do that, so we keep afloat.” A gleam of optimism lights up Grover’s eyes as she bids us goodbye. “Akshar means the alphabet, but it also means something that does not die. Imperishable – that is what I hope for,” she declares.