MALAPPURAM: A vehicle mishap at the age of 28, paralysing him from waist down. Acute financial situation. Several hungry mouths to feed. Few get through such debilitating trials of life, fewer still move on unfazed.
But the hardships did not stop the 50-year-old Thorappa Musthafa from Chemmankadav, Malappuram, on his track. So, what keeps him motivated? “The tragedy,” he says. The wheelchair-bound father of one is the first Indian to design and modify a car for the disabled. He showed his brazen boldness to the world by driving the vehicle to Delhi from Malappuram to receive an award presented by the Centre for his novel effort in 2000. If that derring-do was a desperate attempt of a man trying to prove his worth with his immobile limbs 16 years ago, he underlined his determination by designing about 1,000 cars for disabled for various firms. Now, his brainchild has given wings to the dreams of many who once had to reconcile with the fact that disability came in way of their ambition to drive a car. For these men, Musthafa is a living lesson on scripting a stirring comeback from the brink. “I tell people that I would have been just a taxi driver had I not been crippled in the accident,” Musthafa says.
“I am never worried about what I cannot win or what I’d lost. I am only concerned with what I can do. My each step post-accident was spurred on by the earnest desire to stay afloat. When I was medically 90 to 95 pc paralysed and the doctors gave me no hope for survival, I thought I was finished. When I had recovered partially from that terrible stage, it seemed like a miracle. But the real concern was how I would take care of my family,” he says.
For over five years since the accident, his life had been merely attached to bed. The book about English physicist Stephen Hawking changed his world. “I really wanted to take a new road. If I did not, my family would have starved to death. I thought about a lot of things I can start. Being a car mechanic earlier, I believed taking up the tools again would be wise. Thus I came up with the idea of designing a car for the disabled,” he says.