Fighter girl from Uttar Pradesh rules the world from a bed

Confined to bed for 15 years, she works for strays, besides being a floor designer-3D visualisation consultant, writes Anuraag Singh.
Astha’s life is confined to a special medical bed sent from US by a fellow Osteogenesis Imperfecta patient | EXPRESS
Astha’s life is confined to a special medical bed sent from US by a fellow Osteogenesis Imperfecta patient | EXPRESS

UTTAR PRADESH: Shweta aka Astha Maurya is confined to bed for over 20 years, due to the genetic disorder Osteogenesis Imperfecta (characterised by fragile bones that break easily). The disease has failed to defeat the fighting and creative spirit of Astha, who lives in one of the oldest living cities, Varanasi. Unable to do many normal chores, the 34-year-old suffers pain while living within her house, in a small bed, at the Til Bhandeshwar locality.

With the support of mother Vidya and younger brother Dhananjay, she has offered a lifeline for stray animals, the victims of public cruelty. She coordinates with animal rights activists and veterinarians over the phone across the country to save stray dogs, cattle, donkeys and other animals in Varanasi, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi and Saharanpur.

Her NGO Astha Loving Kindness and Compassion (ALKC) isn’t just limited to saving animals brutalised by humans, but has encompassed feeding stray dogs at Varanasi’s Ganga ghats. She or her family has not solicited funding. Astha saves money out of her earnings as a freelance 3D visualizer for building and construction consultant firms in the fast-growing city of Varanasi.

Her story is elevated by her motivational talk on YouTube channel ‘Astha The Fighter Girl.’ It has, among others, motivated a Washington-based patient of the same disorder to give up his suicidal tendencies and live with renewed hopes. The US national has funded a proper medical bed from which Astha does her 3D visualization work.

“I was hardly two years old when I suffered the first fracture in my left thigh in 1989. A Varanasi-based senior orthopedic doctor, Gautam Chakraborty, plastered the thigh with strong advice that it wasn’t just a normal fracture, but an indication of something graver. By the age of five, I suffered repeated fractures with curvatures in bones in the entire body.

I somehow managed to clear the Class X and Class XII exams from home with the help of my mother, who was posted as a teacher at Ramdev Balika Inter College in the adjoining Bhadohi district,” Astha says. “My mother, too, lived with my pain as both of us led an ostracised life.

Her colleagues and their children considered me cursed. Other kids didn’t even take biscuits offered to them by my mother, as their parents believed that it could shift my curse to them. I repeatedly asked God why I was alive and why I was being punished,” recalls Astha. Motivated by her mother and younger brother, Astha refused to turn into a moribund vegetative state and decided to pursue graduation from Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU).

She was also preparing for medical entrance exams at the behest of her homeopathy practitioner father. Her medical condition cut short her graduation aspirations and prevented her from enrolling in a homeopathic college and a biotechnology course despite clearing the state government’s entrance exams in 2009. Her younger brother Dhananjay started her Facebook page ‘Adopt a Pet,’ which later paved the way for her to save animals brutalised by humans, starting in 2015.

She also successfully completed a three-year specialised course in graphic designing and 3D visualisation from a prominent multimedia education centre in Varanasi. “After one of the institutes refused admission, I managed to get admission in another centre of the same multimedia education major in Varanasi. Further, I learnt interior and exterior designing from a YouTube channel and I have been doing 3D visualisation of floor plans sent by my clients,” Astha says.

Kushagra Kumar Singh, head of the Varanasi-based AM Constructions, says when he met Astha a few years back, he wasn’t sure if she would be able to visualise 3D designs of their floor plans and measurements from her bed. “It’s a complex task even for the medically fit people working with us. However, she has put to rest all our apprehensions. Recently, she fashioned 3D visualisations of floor plans of a palatial house and a four storied apartment in Varanasi’s Sarnath area and she is now working with us on a commercial complex’s designs,” says Kushagra.

“Our clients can’t believe that the 3D designs are the creations of someone confined to bed for over a decade and-ahalf,” says Kushagra. Astha harbours a dream of meeting Prime Minister and Varanasi’s Lok Sabha member Narendra Modi one day.

“Our local Member of Parliament and the country’s Prime Minister — Narendra Modi — is my hero, as he is the one who gave respect to the specially abled people by terming them as ‘Divyang’ instead of calling them ‘Viklang’. I have been trying to meet him for a long time, have tweeted to him many times, but failed to connect with him. It’s my cherished desire to meet him personally one day,” wishes Astha.

Visual wonders
These are 3D visualisation building plans made by Astha, who works as a consultant with a Varanasi-based construction firm

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