We think Vijay was about 10 when he came to us in 2007. We don’t know anything about his parents or what his date of birth was. He chose to celebrate his birthday on 24th July – because he liked the numbers 2, 4, 7.

One of the first things we noticed about Vijay was that he couldn’t communicate. He was a deaf boy who didn’t know any form of language or communication. He only made sounds – we couldn’t understand him and he couldn’t understand us.

Even today Vijay is still quite hard to communicate with. We enrolled him in Pragati School for the Deaf along with the others, but he still does not sign in the way that the other boys do. He seems more comfortable in a world where he cannot communicate, and doesn’t tend to mix and socialise with the other boys in the house.

Vijay was one of the first seven boys to be trained at Shuktara Cakes, our French patisserie training centre, where he was responsible for cleaning. The first thing he spent his money on was a bicycle.

“I ride my bike, close to the house, I don’t go far,” he says. “I like watching bike races and cricket on TV.”