Tina Garg, 22, spent the first two decades of her life with hearing loss in both ears. Diagnosed when she was just a baby, she grew up with little to no functional hearing. Her daily life required intense effort, relying heavily on lip-reading, facial cues and hearing aids that required immense focus and effort, making daily communication a constant challenge.
Today, she is stepping onto the campus of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore, not just with her admission letters, but with an enthusiasm to listen to lectures clearly just like any other student. “People actually get me now. And that’s such a relief,” she exclaimed.
A surgical team led by Dr Sumit Mrig, Director & Unit Head of ENT & Cochlear Implant Surgery at Max Super Speciality Hospital, Dwarka, performed a bilateral cochlear implant surgery on the 22-year-old. Although rare, many hearing specialists increasingly recommend bilateral implantation for adults with severe-to-profound hearing loss in both ears, especially younger and working-age adults, because the benefits for communication and quality of life can be substantial.
Beyond lip-reading
Tina’s journey is a story of resilience, determination and the will to rise above challenges when times get tough. While she was not born completely deaf, her parents discovered her profound hearing impairment when she was just six or seven months old. Recognizing the challenge early, her family took a bold move to shift from Delhi to Chennai for an early intervention programme at Balavidyalaya-The School for Young Deaf Children. Here, she built the foundation of her academic abilities and mastered lip-reading while wearing hearing aids, skills that became her tool of communication.
At the age of six, Tina entered mainstream schooling. Frequent relocations required constant adaptation to a new environment, new classmates and new expectations. Each transition came with its own set of challenges, but with the unwavering support of her parents, family, friends, and schools, she kept moving, never allowing these hurdles to define her personality. She excelled at Delhi Public School branches in Pune and Bengaluru but relying on lip reading required immense focus and effort, making daily communication a constant challenge.
Still she kept going till she secured admission to IIT Bombay for her undergraduate studies. However, the sprawling lecture halls of IIT presented a difficulty that traditional hearing aids could no longer bridge.
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“She was an expert at lip-reading and managed to pave her way through all her schooling years,” Dr Mrig explained. “But in college, you reach a stage where education becomes highly advanced, and teachers are moving around a massive hall with over a hundred students. This is where she first felt incapacitated.”
While her family upgraded her hearing aids annually to keep pace with evolving technology, the sound remained fundamentally unnatural and filled with distortions. “When I had group discussions with more than two people, focusing became incredibly difficult because I couldn’t turn my head fast enough to see who was speaking,” said Tina, whose confidence was profoundly subdued by the lack of natural hearing.
A daughter’s choice, a parent’s anxiety
The turning point came from Tina herself. Having maintained connections with a community of peers from her early intervention days in Chennai, she observed many thriving with cochlear implants. Recognizing the need to address her hearing more fundamentally, Tina made a courageous decision. Supported by Geeti, an audiologist in Mumbai, she chose to undergo cochlear implant surgery even if it meant letting go of a prestigious opportunity at IIM Calcutta. This was a massive commitment to transforming her life and breaking free of the limitations of lip-reading.
For her parents, the proposition was terrifying initially. “We did not agree at first,” her father admitted candidly. “She was already in her 20s. At that age, we felt a surgery like this was highly complicated, and we were deeply concerned as parents. But she did not listen to us.”
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Determined to reclaim her independence, Tina researched the procedure independently online while her father visited major public medical institutions, including AIIMS, to build her case. Eventually, the family consulted Dr Mrig, who helped map out a clinical path for a bilateral implant.
The medical challenge was unique. Because her impairment was identified at 6 to 7 months old, she faced an exceptionally long duration of auditory deprivation. However, because she had consistently used hearing aids and spoken language rather than relying purely on sign language, Dr Mrig knew her brain was primed to accept the new neural inputs. “I was very sure about getting her hearing back,” he said. “The main challenge was verbal therapy. We had to shift her communication entirely from lip-reading to hearing through the device, and she responded exceptionally well.”
Sacrificing an IIM seat for medical rehabilitation
Tina’s determination was so absolute that last year, after clearing the Common Admission Test (CAT) and securing that coveted seat at IIM Calcutta, she did the unthinkable: she rejected the admission. “She said, ‘No, I want to go for the implant first for a better life,” her father shared.
Following the surgery, the results proved to be completely life-changing. With the support of Samriddhi, an audiologist at Sankalp ENT Clinic, Tina underwent rapid and effective auditory rehabilitation. “The world of sound opened up to me in a way I had never experienced before,” she said.
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This critical process of retraining her brain to decode sounds lasted nearly a year, including six to eight months of intensive speech therapy. Remarkably, she balanced this rigorous medical rehabilitation with her independent studies. This year, Tina cleared the CAT examination once again, securing admissions to every single top-tier business school in the country, including IIM Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Lucknow and Bangalore. Continuing her journey of excellence, Tina went on to earn admission into the prestigious IIM Bangalore.
A voice for change
A year after the bilateral surgery, her clinical and social outcomes have far exceeded expectations. Tina is no longer heavily dependent on lip-reading, she is happier and more determined to take on bigger challenges. Confident of engaging with the world at large, she is now creating social media content on sustainability and climate action. Once she had felt under-confident with her speech, now she feels she can truly change the way the world thinks on sustainability.
On campus, her new world is thriving. “I was with her last week at IIM Bangalore,” her father said. “A lot of students already knew her from her initiatives. Her speech has improved so much that even extended family members have noted how much clearer and more confident she sounds.”
According to Dr Mrig, the internal components of the cochlear implant are designed to restore her hearing functions for life, requiring only external processor upgrades or replacements every 7 to 10 years.
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Tina’s story highlights a critical evolution in the field of ENT surgery, proving that adult cochlear implants, when combined with targeted therapy and patient motivation, can successfully reverse decades of hearing loss. Tina is no longer just reading lips; she is commanding the room.
Insharah Khan is an intern with the Indian Express
