A LIFE THAT REFUSES TO BE SILENT

Days after birth, Dhwani Patel became deaf and mute, but she turned her struggle into strength. She learnt computers and gave her creativity new wings, writes Dilip Singh Kshatriya

- Dilip Singh Kshatriya

SOME lives begin with struggle. Some lives become a struggle. And some lives, like Dhwani Patel's, turn struggle into strength quietly, relentlessly, and with unbreakable courage.

Born in Ahmedabad in 1990, Dhwani Pravinbhai Patel entered the world in a precarious state. She is 100 per cent deaf and mute. Fate tested her even before she could take her first breath properly.

Just three days after her birth, severe jaundice spread into her blood, forcing doctors to perform two emergency blood transfusions. The warning was stark: if blood failed to reach certain parts of her body, those parts would stop responding. That fear soon became real. Her eardrums weakened, her balance failed, and the world around her fell silent.

What medicine could not promise, her parents delivered through determination. Her father, an electrician, and her mother, a devoted homemaker, refused to surrender to despair. Physiotherapy sessions helped her learn to sit and walk. Speech therapy helped her find ways to express herself. Endless home exercises strengthened her body. Above all, her parents held an unshakable belief that Dhwani deserved a normal place in a normal world.