KASARAGOD: "Mashe (sir), are you in the car that just stopped in front of my shop?"
"Yes... you cannot see me but I can see you. Take the road adjacent to the house and
you will reach my workshop. Speak to Suresh there."
"No, you cannot see me. I'm down." The call ends.
Inside the house, Shanavas T A (46) lies on a semi-automatic hydraulic hospital bed in the middle of an 18 by 15 ft room. A three-seater sofa is the only other piece of furniture in the room. A 32-inch monitor hung on the facing wall brings to him CCTV footage from his two timber stores, depot, and around his house. An Apple AirPod affixed to his left ear keeps him connected to his customers.
"This is my office," says Shanavas. "Nothing happens in my business without it first going through my ears."
Shanavas has been paralysed neck down for the past 11 years but that has not stopped him from setting up and running a multi-crore timber business. He is not only successful but is also a trusted timber trader, supplying beams and planks in all sizes and for all needs. He gets another call. "Gopi Mashe? Okay. I will check and call back."
He then tells his daughter, "Molé Nida, check if the money has been credited."
After a few punches on the mobile phone, she replies in the affirmative and calls Gopi for her father. "Yes, got it. You can call me anytime for anything" Shanavas says, and in the same breath adds: "Nida is my assistant."
It took a few moments to realise he ended the call and rejoined the interview.
Life-altering accident
Nida Fathimath was 40 days old and his elder daughter Fida Fathimath was six years old, and in LKG, when Shanavas met with the road accident that paralysed him. He was 35 then. At 4am on May 6, 2010, when he was getting ready to leave for Karkala in Udupi district to buy timber, his wife Rahmath gave the infant Nida to him. "You haven't taken her in your arms yet. Hold her once before leaving," his wife had said.
That was the only time he held Nida in his arms. While returning in his car, with two trucks loaded with timber trailing him, he dozed off at Kuniya near Periya. The car turned over multiple times. Shanavas, who was not wearing the seat belt, was flung out of the car. No vehicle stopped to help him. The two truck drivers loaded him onto one of the trucks and drove to a hospital in Kanhangad. "The travel in the truck might have aggravated my injury," he says.
The doctors in Kanhangad referred him to a tertiary care hospital in Mangaluru. The doctors there confirmed the spinal cord injury but ruled out surgery because it was risky. Hoping against hope, his family kept him in the ICU for four months and a half. Rahmath, with Nida in her arms, was the caregiver.
The stay in the ICU was the most painful period of his life, he says. "I don't have brothers, nor does Rahmath. Our fathers had passed away and we were on our own."
There was no improvement in his condition but the young family's money was depleting fast. "I could not even hold my head straight," he says.
Hope from despair
Rahmath then shifted him to Christian Medical College, Vellore. At CMC, the doctors implanted a steel rod so that he could control his neck movements. They stayed in the hospital for five more months. Shanavas says the stay was the turning point of his life. "Not because they made me walk. But because the conditions of other patients made me realise that I am 100% disabled but I was affected only 1%," he says.
Woes of others
He says he saw a doctor who was in a coma. His bed sores were looking like craters. He suffered a spinal cord injury when his head hit the edge of a swimming pool. His wife left him and his mother was taking care of him. There was a zoology teacher from Victoria College in Palakkad. He was from Pala and used to spend a lot of time in the forest documenting birds. One day, while walking in his street, a motorcycle rammed into him. He never got up. His doctor-daughter, who was caring for him, showed me his photograph. "He was tall and handsome like Suresh Gopi. But what I saw was a man barely weighing 20kg," he said.
Then there was Jasna, a young newly-married woman. A throat surgery went wrong and she was reduced to a vegetable because of medical negligence, he says. "She always had moist eyes. Her eyes told me she would understand what we were saying. But she cannot even express if she is in pain or has an itch," he says.
Her husband divorced her soon after and left with their infant child. She is being taken care of by her mother. "I am not being judgemental but this is the reality," he says.
Restarts business from hospital
By the fifth month in the hospital, the family had exhausted their money. "I decided I won't depend on anyone, not for money," he says. The couple planned to restart their timber business from the Vellore hospital. Rahmath pledged her gold and raised around Rs 1 lakh. He used the money to buy timber on a small scale. By the end of the fifth month, Shanavas, Rahmath, and Nida returned home to Kamballoor in East Eleri panchayat. "Our business kept growing and we never looked back," says Shanavas.
Now he sells imported timber, apart from indigenous wood. He gets customers through word of mouth. "Ninety per cent of people who come to me buy from me. And they send their friends and relatives to me," he says.
If Shanavas is the sales guru, Rahmath, a B.Com graduate, is the bookkeeper. On September 14, on their 17th wedding anniversary, the couple opened a new timber shop at Parappa in Kinanur-Karinthalam panchayat. Parappa, a 40-minute drive from Kamballoor, is the hometown of Rahmath. They employ 15 carpenters at their depot in Kamballoor and five at the workshop in Parappa.
Farmer and social activist Chandran Nair says Shanavas does a lot of charity work but without fanfare. "He helps a lot of students, poor families, and kidney and cancer patients," says Nair.
Shanavas plays it down. "Money cannot help me get up and walk but it may make a difference to others," he says.
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