I have been stretched across the poles
of language on one end is its generative
pole
this means that language has the
capacity of not only creating thought in
your brain but also in instilling it in
others I rely on this as a writer let me
try it out on you all so if I narrate to
you
a childhood anecdote when I gave my
brother Burkhart
my precious pocket money to go and get
me some sweets from the corner shop that
we would share but he ate all of them by
himself on the way back you can all
imagine my bewilderment if I talked
about the long line of refugees of which
I was one during the Gulf War at the
Iraq Turkey border sleeping on roads
going to toilet in the fields while the
political heads decided what our fate
was going to be like you can all
participate in my duress if I describe
what I felt when I held my baby in my
arms for the first time having struggled
with infertility for nine years you can
it’s the generative power of language
that lends itself into poetry and
literature it creates new realities and
paradigms and cognitive remodeling it
just made you all witness to three
obscure events of my life which for the
language is the one main thing that
differentiates human beings from other
creations it is essentially what makes
us human the last rung on the
evolutionary ladder as they say this
explains why the human brain is so much
bigger than all the other species
because it has so much to do with
language would you like to see how so
what you listen goes in to your brain to
a place called the auditory cortex what
you read goes to a visual cortex
information from these two areas is sent
to a place called Wernicke’s area her
meaning and comprehension is initiated
this information is transferred via
arcuate fasciculus to a place called
Broca’s area where speech is generated
this parcel is sent to the parts of the
brain that control the movements of your
lips tongue throat mouth and that’s how
sounds are produced and this is just the
tip of the iceberg luckily you don’t
have to remember all this your brain
does this automatically within
milliseconds which is why we can have
fluent unending conversations and if you
are a la Hari which you all are you can
imagine how fast your brain has to work
but what if you lose this domain just
consider this we’ve all had the
occasional incident whereby we cannot
come up with a word or a song gets stuck
in our heads or we listen to a foreign
language like Chinese and don’t
understand what it means but what if
this inability to understand or to say
something lasts longer than an instant
it becomes permanent losing language is
not the same as never acquiring it when
you lose language after having acquired
it normally it is always due to an
insult or injury to your brain the
technical term for this is a fascia this
is the other pole of language and I deal
with this as a neuro rehab physician any
interruption in the path of language
that we just saw can cause aphasia which
is why you can have different
intensities and different types of
aphasia depending on how much damage
that has been done
however aphasia does not affect hearing
or intelligence I must mention here the
distinction between speech and language
we often confuse the two speech is the
oral the vocal manifestation of language
but language is much more than that
reading writing to some extent thinking
are part of language sign language is
part of the language spectrum in the
deaf population so aphasia can affect
you can imagine that losing the ability
to rely on language is like being
imprisoned in your own mind and yet it’s
not a rare phenomenon at all almost 30
to 40 percent of stroke survivors alone
are left with a certain degree of
aphasia however most people have not
heard about it with a show of hands can
I please ask how many of you know a
person with aphasia
have heard about this before a few
that’s good but as expected not many
since I’ve told you that I’ve been
stressed across the poles of language
from expressive to reticent from
articulate to limited from eloquence to
aphasia let me tell you how a decade ago
when I was completing my training in
Neurology in England my brother Burkhart
the same one who stole my sweets had a
hit-and-run road traffic accident here
in Lahore he was in his final year of
chartered accountancy he sustained
severe brain injuries he was in a coma
this event was like 9/11 for our family
waking up from a coma isn’t the happy
ending that is portrayed in movies it’s
the start of a lifetime of commitment
resolve and a constant struggle between
hope and despair Burkhart was paralyzed
all down his right side his arm leg
right side of his face throat tongue
lips and on top of this my eloquent and
articulate brother who wrote and sang
songs had aphasia our initial and
immediate concerns obviously were to try
and get some semblance of normalcy for
him it took him almost a year to get a
certain degree of Independence one
excruciating step at a time
first the tracheostomy was removed then
the diapers came off then the wheelchair
became redundant then
he started walking on his own not
everything came back though
his right hand remained weak and after
multiple failures a ray of hope shone
when he picked up the pencil in his left
hand and tried to scribble with it bicth
held on to that hope and it was as if
he’s a three year old once again
learning how to hold a pencil he
persisted and he taught himself how to
draw and paint his journey from not even
being able to open paint bottles to
creating internationally acclaimed
masterpieces is truly remarkable of
course he couldn’t keep up with all his
dreams he couldn’t complete his CA
instead he did a BFA honors in Fine Arts
and is now enrolled in the master’s
program and the most prestigious art art
institution of the country a round of
applause ladies and gentlemen but he
still struggles with aphasia in trying
to help Burkhart navigate through a life
and existence without language my
journey into the expanse of language
commenced doing this from a point of
personal interest was so different from
all the knowledge and training I had as
a doctor to understand that if he wrote
awful to a picture of mine he may really
mean awesome this required a certain
level of understanding that I did not
have the
living with aphasia is different from
dealing with it in clinic we learned how
to be patient to use gestures point and
tell techniques say our things slowly
repeat often use alternate phrases and
this was just us though on Lucas I will
show you a conversation a recent
conversation I’ve had with Burkhart a
decade after his accident he prefers to
talk to me on whatsapp his favorite
medium and he writes in English have a
look so you see you can immediately pick
up that you can’t you have to look at
language beyond the grammatical
structure and even the individual words
you begin to understand that language
does not always communicate this is why
aphasia is the most isolating disability
amongst all disabilities and I don’t
make that claim it has been proven
scientifically I have seen life now from
the eyes of a special needs family and I
understand that the hurdles and setbacks
that we face are not because of malice
they’re purely because of ignorance and
each one of these is an opportunity to
create awareness in trying to help
Burkhart to compensate for his aphasia I
had to supersize my linguistic capacity
I became a writer and an activist it
started with a Facebook page and a blog
called my amazing brother Burkhart but
in a long string of projects that we
have undertaken to promote inclusivity
and to educate against disability the
last and most significant one is the
development of the aphasia research
Network of Pakistan an organization
dedicated to working with aphasia in
Pakistan I work with language on
language I use language both as a tool
and as a substrate both clinical and
literary why you ask well why not
I have Burkhardt as an example of what
can be achieved despite everything that
is lost it’s a matter of responsibility
in the words of Richard Pimentel
responsibility is made up of two words
response and ability responsibility
isn’t something that someone puts on you
we find ourselves in situations and we
find ourselves asking what it is that we
can do what makes a difference is what
response you give with the ability that
you have but God has shown me that
Asscher short way of fulfilling your
responsibility is to become the best
version of yourself including the things
that you can and cannot do that way your
light radiates across all limitations
and boundaries ladies and gentlemen I
present to you my travel guide and
companion across this language scape my
amazing brother vaca
[Applause]
[Music] you
of language on one end is its generative
pole
this means that language has the
capacity of not only creating thought in
your brain but also in instilling it in
others I rely on this as a writer let me
try it out on you all so if I narrate to
you
a childhood anecdote when I gave my
brother Burkhart
my precious pocket money to go and get
me some sweets from the corner shop that
we would share but he ate all of them by
himself on the way back you can all
imagine my bewilderment if I talked
about the long line of refugees of which
I was one during the Gulf War at the
Iraq Turkey border sleeping on roads
going to toilet in the fields while the
political heads decided what our fate
was going to be like you can all
participate in my duress if I describe
what I felt when I held my baby in my
arms for the first time having struggled
with infertility for nine years you can
it’s the generative power of language
that lends itself into poetry and
literature it creates new realities and
paradigms and cognitive remodeling it
just made you all witness to three
obscure events of my life which for the
language is the one main thing that
differentiates human beings from other
creations it is essentially what makes
us human the last rung on the
evolutionary ladder as they say this
explains why the human brain is so much
bigger than all the other species
because it has so much to do with
language would you like to see how so
what you listen goes in to your brain to
a place called the auditory cortex what
you read goes to a visual cortex
information from these two areas is sent
to a place called Wernicke’s area her
meaning and comprehension is initiated
this information is transferred via
arcuate fasciculus to a place called
Broca’s area where speech is generated
this parcel is sent to the parts of the
brain that control the movements of your
lips tongue throat mouth and that’s how
sounds are produced and this is just the
tip of the iceberg luckily you don’t
have to remember all this your brain
does this automatically within
milliseconds which is why we can have
fluent unending conversations and if you
are a la Hari which you all are you can
imagine how fast your brain has to work
but what if you lose this domain just
consider this we’ve all had the
occasional incident whereby we cannot
come up with a word or a song gets stuck
in our heads or we listen to a foreign
language like Chinese and don’t
understand what it means but what if
this inability to understand or to say
something lasts longer than an instant
it becomes permanent losing language is
not the same as never acquiring it when
you lose language after having acquired
it normally it is always due to an
insult or injury to your brain the
technical term for this is a fascia this
is the other pole of language and I deal
with this as a neuro rehab physician any
interruption in the path of language
that we just saw can cause aphasia which
is why you can have different
intensities and different types of
aphasia depending on how much damage
that has been done
however aphasia does not affect hearing
or intelligence I must mention here the
distinction between speech and language
we often confuse the two speech is the
oral the vocal manifestation of language
but language is much more than that
reading writing to some extent thinking
are part of language sign language is
part of the language spectrum in the
deaf population so aphasia can affect
you can imagine that losing the ability
to rely on language is like being
imprisoned in your own mind and yet it’s
not a rare phenomenon at all almost 30
to 40 percent of stroke survivors alone
are left with a certain degree of
aphasia however most people have not
heard about it with a show of hands can
I please ask how many of you know a
person with aphasia
have heard about this before a few
that’s good but as expected not many
since I’ve told you that I’ve been
stressed across the poles of language
from expressive to reticent from
articulate to limited from eloquence to
aphasia let me tell you how a decade ago
when I was completing my training in
Neurology in England my brother Burkhart
the same one who stole my sweets had a
hit-and-run road traffic accident here
in Lahore he was in his final year of
chartered accountancy he sustained
severe brain injuries he was in a coma
this event was like 9/11 for our family
waking up from a coma isn’t the happy
ending that is portrayed in movies it’s
the start of a lifetime of commitment
resolve and a constant struggle between
hope and despair Burkhart was paralyzed
all down his right side his arm leg
right side of his face throat tongue
lips and on top of this my eloquent and
articulate brother who wrote and sang
songs had aphasia our initial and
immediate concerns obviously were to try
and get some semblance of normalcy for
him it took him almost a year to get a
certain degree of Independence one
excruciating step at a time
first the tracheostomy was removed then
the diapers came off then the wheelchair
became redundant then
he started walking on his own not
everything came back though
his right hand remained weak and after
multiple failures a ray of hope shone
when he picked up the pencil in his left
hand and tried to scribble with it bicth
held on to that hope and it was as if
he’s a three year old once again
learning how to hold a pencil he
persisted and he taught himself how to
draw and paint his journey from not even
being able to open paint bottles to
creating internationally acclaimed
masterpieces is truly remarkable of
course he couldn’t keep up with all his
dreams he couldn’t complete his CA
instead he did a BFA honors in Fine Arts
and is now enrolled in the master’s
program and the most prestigious art art
institution of the country a round of
applause ladies and gentlemen but he
still struggles with aphasia in trying
to help Burkhart navigate through a life
and existence without language my
journey into the expanse of language
commenced doing this from a point of
personal interest was so different from
all the knowledge and training I had as
a doctor to understand that if he wrote
awful to a picture of mine he may really
mean awesome this required a certain
level of understanding that I did not
have the
living with aphasia is different from
dealing with it in clinic we learned how
to be patient to use gestures point and
tell techniques say our things slowly
repeat often use alternate phrases and
this was just us though on Lucas I will
show you a conversation a recent
conversation I’ve had with Burkhart a
decade after his accident he prefers to
talk to me on whatsapp his favorite
medium and he writes in English have a
look so you see you can immediately pick
up that you can’t you have to look at
language beyond the grammatical
structure and even the individual words
you begin to understand that language
does not always communicate this is why
aphasia is the most isolating disability
amongst all disabilities and I don’t
make that claim it has been proven
scientifically I have seen life now from
the eyes of a special needs family and I
understand that the hurdles and setbacks
that we face are not because of malice
they’re purely because of ignorance and
each one of these is an opportunity to
create awareness in trying to help
Burkhart to compensate for his aphasia I
had to supersize my linguistic capacity
I became a writer and an activist it
started with a Facebook page and a blog
called my amazing brother Burkhart but
in a long string of projects that we
have undertaken to promote inclusivity
and to educate against disability the
last and most significant one is the
development of the aphasia research
Network of Pakistan an organization
dedicated to working with aphasia in
Pakistan I work with language on
language I use language both as a tool
and as a substrate both clinical and
literary why you ask well why not
I have Burkhardt as an example of what
can be achieved despite everything that
is lost it’s a matter of responsibility
in the words of Richard Pimentel
responsibility is made up of two words
response and ability responsibility
isn’t something that someone puts on you
we find ourselves in situations and we
find ourselves asking what it is that we
can do what makes a difference is what
response you give with the ability that
you have but God has shown me that
Asscher short way of fulfilling your
responsibility is to become the best
version of yourself including the things
that you can and cannot do that way your
light radiates across all limitations
and boundaries ladies and gentlemen I
present to you my travel guide and
companion across this language scape my
amazing brother vaca
[Applause]
[Music] you
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