A lesson in ‘trusting Life’ from an inspiring mother

Trust Life! Know that if you have been created, you will be cared for, looked after and provided for!

Malvika Iyer (L) and Hema Malini Krishnan (R)

Last evening we heard Malvika Iyer speak for the first time! Malvika – remember, I had written (some weeks back) about this young lady with an unbeatable spirit who is also a bilateral amputee – touched our hearts with her story. She left everyone in the audience with the strong message, personifying it in every sense, that the only disability anyone can have is a bad attitude. She attributed all her strength to her mother Hema Malini Krishnan, who, she says, has never made her feel deprived or disabled in any manner. “At home, I was never treated as if there was something missing in my Life, although I don’t have both my hands. I was raised as any other teenager would be in any other home. My mother always told me that I must pursue whatever I believe in and never once did she say, ‘but you can’t do this because you don’t have hands’,” says Malvika. So, naturally, the audience was in awe of Malvika for sure, but they were even more keen to hear Hema speak.

Hema finally obliged. She epitomizes trusting the Universe, the ‘Creator’ as she says, trusting Life, implicitly. “When the bomb blast happened in 2002 that took away Malvika’s hands and changed our lives completely, indeed, we were gripped with fear of the unknown. But I was sure that we will make it. Malvika was just 13 then. But I believed that she would lead a normal Life. Though at that time, her legs were also badly injured. People ask me where my courage and conviction came from. Simple – my point is that if we have been placed in a challenging situation by Life, we will also be given the means – physical, financial, spiritual – to deal with it. I simply trusted the Creator. And I went with the flow. People often ask me what will happen of Malvika after me. And I again answer that I am only an instrument to help Malvika. I am here for a fixed tenure. When my turn is over, Life will arrange another instrument. I know this will happen. I trust the Creator. I have learned to accept what I have been given.”

Everyone in the audience was moved by Hema’s perspective. Her faith is unwavering. And this must be our learning too. 

Most of our worries and anxieties come from wondering how things will turn out in our lives. We survey our own limitations – which are anyway imagined and never logically proven – and conclude that something or the other is impossible. Our perceived impossibilities dictate our attitude. Which is why we are sulking, brooding, complaining and grieving about our lives. Even for a moment, we don’t wish to acknowledge that there’s a higher intelligence that powers the Universe. Our education makes us believe that we are intelligent and creation is dumb. So we ignore the biggest miracle that we are born human, without our ever asking to be created or born, we ignore the fact that the whole, magnificent, inscrutable Universe has been created, by this higher intelligence, ahead of us and we ignore this lifetime’s blessing to explore and experience creation’s myriad miracles. All we are obsessed with is our view of our problems and our view again of our inability to solve those problems. Nothing can be deemed as more foolish an approach to living.

Every time you feel despondent over mundane, or lesser challenging, situations, think of Hema’s trust in the Universe, in her ‘Creator’, that makes us accept her child’s special condition and yet encourages her to inspire Malvika to live a full, complete Life with no limits. Every time you are complaining that you don’t have this or that, think of your attitude as your biggest limitation, your disability. Think of Malvika, who doesn’t have hands but has the zest, the will and spirit in her to live a Life without limitations! Fundamentally, we must learn, despite all our education, not to intellectualize Life. We simply can’t. Life has a mind of its own. And we must simply trust it. There are only two ways to approach Life. If there’s a problem that your education, logic or science can solve, stop worrying about the problem – because it can be solved. And if you are dealing with a problem that your education, logic and science cannot solve, stop worrying about the problem again – because you cannot solve it! Simple. What you cannot solve, trust Life to solve it. And trust Life to give you the strength to deal with the problem if it can’t be solved.

If we pause a moment and look around we will find that our lives are blessed compared to all that people are facing and enduring around us. When you appreciate and value the blessing called this lifetime, you will start living – and you too will start trusting Life.

The ‘Malvika Effect’ – unshackled by the past, undaunted by the future

Every once in a while, you will meet someone who will inspire you to live your Life differently. Soak in that inspiration and every time you feel desperate or depressed about something in Life, employ that person’s spirit, his or her joie de vivre, to revive you!

Last week we met one such person – Malvika Iyer. She’s a bilateral amputee, who lost both her hands in a bomb blast in Bikaner, Rajasthan, caused by a fire in an ammunition depot. It was a near fatal accident. Her two legs were badly injured too – she had multiple fractures in both of them; nerve paralysis in the right leg and hypoesthesia (loss of sensation) in the left leg. She was barely 13 then. She was hospitalized for 18 months and went through multiple surgeries in hospitals in Jaipur and Rajasthan. Today, almost 12 years on, Malvika is a Ph.D. Scholar and Junior Research Fellow at the Madras School of Social Work. She made up for the time she lost while she was in hospital, by completing her 10^th standard through a private appearance – she scored 97 % overall, with a 100 % each in Math and Science! Importantly, she finished in the same year that she would have, had she not met with the accident; which is, she did not lose an academic year! Malvika then went on to graduate from the famed St.Stephen’s College, New Delhi, even as she worked extensively with differently-abled children at the Centre for Child and Adolescent Well Being in New Delhi.    

Lady Courage - Malvika Iyer
Picture Courtesy: The Week/Internet

We went to meet Malvika, armed with all this information – of an achiever who had succeeded despite all the odds. But we ended up meeting the most down-to-earth person ever, a girl-next-door, who wore her ‘specialness’ on her sleeve. She is aggressive but not bitter and combative, she’s resolute but not abrasively feisty, she’s accepting of her ‘special’ condition but not apologetic, she’s conscious of her future – and the challenges it will bring along – but lives every moment to the fullest! Malvika says that she realized early on that camouflaging her disability was not a solution to her problem. Accepting the way she now was and living with the awareness of what she can and cannot do, was the only way, she reckoned, to live her Life fully, meaningfully!

There’s an infectious air of positivity about Malvika. Sitting with her you can feel your confidence levels receive a boost. You know that you too can face Life – squarely and with a smile! Behind Malvika’s quiet courage is her mother Hema’s unflinching support. Hema says Malvika’s accident changed their entire family’s attitude to living. Fear, insecurity, worry, anxiety – all these emotions, says Hema, did not mean anything, anymore. That Malvika had survived and that she had to live a full Life began to engage the entire family. So when Malvika – who chose not to wear her prosthetic hands when we visited her – whips out her smartphone and sends you a Friend Request on facebook, all by herself, without having hands like you and me, you know how right Hema’s been with dumping wasteful sentiments like self-pity and bitterness and encouraging Malvika to live and celebrate Life!

It is but natural to get stumped by one of Life’s blows. It takes time to make sense of what’s going on when Life socks you and shocks you. You don’t know how you are going to cope with your new reality. You don’t even know if you will make it, if you will survive to tell your tale. Surely, Malvika’s Life too went through precisely the same pattern, but where she changed the game for herself is to accept – and not resist – her new reality. From her acceptance, an inner peace was born. And that’s the resoluteness, the quiet courage that reflects in her. She employs this spirt to live her Life fully – unshackled by the past and undaunted by the future.

We came away inspired after meeting Malvika. You can all it the “Malvika Effect”! We were particularly delighted that she had accepted our invitation to receive the first copy of my forthcoming book “Fall Like A Rose Petal – A father’s lessons on how to be happy and content while living without money” (Westland) when it releases in August this year! I will carry the memory of this meeting in me for a long, long time – for it is not often that you meet someone who reminds you that you have, well, met Life!