Hello there! My name is Rajiv and I was born with Cerebral Palsy and deaf in both ears. I’m the last adopted child in the family. I have 5 brothers and 1 sister and I am originally from Calcutta, India. My adoptive parents got me to Connecticut on October 31st, 1986 from John F. Kennedy Airport where I survived from the plane’s crash.

When my parents tried to figure why I was unable to hear; they took me to a brain doctor. He told them that I was deaf, and they were shocked. Speech therapist explained to mom that she had only 2 types of sign language. She was told American Sign Language (ASL) or Signed Exact English (SEE). ASL is a very different language with its own grammar and structure which results in poor quality of writing English and even lip-reading is excluded. Hence, mom decided to go with SEE. It involved signing everything based on English’s