26 years on, tattoo reunites deaf-mute man with family

LUCKNOW: This seems straight out of a Manmohan Desai flick, minus the gloss and glamour. A deaf and mute youth, lost at a village fair, was reunited with his family after 26 years, thanks to a tattoo on his hand. The happy ending, or rather a new beginning for Jilajit Singh Maurya, was also made possible by social media.
Born with hearing and speech impairment, Jilajit, the youngest son of a well-off farmer from Gothan village in Azamgarh, went missing on June 1, 1996. He was 35 years old then, said his nephew, Chandrashekhar Maurya (46).
Jilajit’s distraught father, Sohan Maurya, and two brothers started searching for him. His mother had died in 1991. “He wasn’t even mentally as alert as others. My father and uncle visited adjoining districts, but there was no trace of him. We visited pilgrimage sites, offered alms to the poor, performed rituals, but all in vain,” said Chandrashekhar.
Jilajit’s father died in 2011. The family gradually came to terms with the “loss”. Till Chandrashekhar one day received a Facebook photo of a tattooed hand from a colleague.
At a barber’s shop in Hatwa village of Raebareli, 260km west of Azamgarh, village pradhan Dilip Singh spotted an old man in a bad shape who couldn’t speak or hear. The clue to his whereabouts, a “godna” (tattoo using natural dye) on his arm, that had his name and address, had since faded. But the words ‘Maurya’ and ‘Azamgarh’ were still legible.
The pradhan took him to his house, clicked a picture of his tattooed arm and posted it on Facebook. It was shared by his acquaintances and then further, until Chandrashekhar’s colleague chanced upon it. “On December 13, a fellow teacher sent me the photo of an elderly person with a faded tattoo on his hand, posted on Facebook by one Shivendra Singh of Amethi,” he said.
Chandrashekhar sent a message to Shivendra, who turned out to Dilip Singh’s son. “My father brought him home, fed him and called a doctor. Then, we started looking for his family members,” Shivendra told TOI.
After Jilajit’s brothers confirmed his identity, Chandrashekhar and his younger brother reached the pradhan’s house on Tuesday and brought back their uncle. Jilajit’s return was nothing less than a festival for the family. His two brothers began dancing and distributed kheer among the villagers. Nobody would know the pain and trouble that Jilajit went through all these years as he cannot communicate.