The resilient mother: an unending inspiration

Hello people! Here we feature stories of people in conversation with Naren. When Naren meets people, he invariably gets them to open up for a warm, inspiring, and sometimes rib-tickling conversations. In such chats, beautiful stories are shared, and so many of them are musings on parenting! Here’s one such story by Dr. Irfan Cherawala on the grit, resilience, and the utterly inspiring attitude that his mother embodied.

The story is verbatim, with all the errors that make it real, vulnerable, and gorgeous.

“I was four-and-a-half years old and my brother was three, when my mother went completely blind. Imagine the plight of that mother with two children to  be brought up and going blind.  Plus, at that time, my father was also not around. He was in Saudi Arabia. She was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa caused by vitamin A deficiency, which has no cure in the world till date.      

           
Back then, we were staying in a joint family. When I was 6-years-old,  I realized that, despite being completely blind, she was cooking and washing utensils and also doing all the other house-hold work to take care of 20 people in that house!

At one point of time in life, she was even running a business selling clothes that she got from Kolkata. She is my greatest life inspiration.
At present, we both husband and wife go to work, while my strong mother looks after my 10-year-old son. Ma is 68 now. It has been 38 years since she lost her eyesight. My mother is my greatest inspiration and motivation to KEEP GOING in life. “Never give up and always trust and surrender to God” is her funda.”

What a lady. Lucky to have a mother like this, Doctor. Do you also have such beautiful stories of your parents or elders that help you go on with life, no matter what? Do share them with us.