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“It is up to us to make the most of the opportunities that life gives every one of us”

Kerala has always been a football-mad state and Vais Muhammed (31) from Kozhikode is no different from most of his compatriots. He has been rooting for England during the current FIFA World Cup series; his favourite player used to be Wayne Rooney before his retirement and now it’s Marcus Rashford.
 
It was while playing football in high school one day that Vais found he was losing his balance and his legs weren’t able to kick as they should. A diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) followed, and regular injections allowed him to lead a ‘normal’ life. After finishing his 12th standard at Silver Hills School he joined B.Com in Farook College. He dreamt of doing a CA course and becoming a chartered accountant like his elder brother Vasil Muhammed who heads an organisation in Chennai. He stayed in a hostel in Kochi and cleared the Foundation programme in the first attempt.
 
Commerce runs in the family. Vais’s father Iqbal Muhammed owns a hotel and his younger brother Vaseem Muhammed just completed his MBA in Chennai. Vais was around 25 when his family, acting on someone’s advice, stopped the injections and put him on alternative medicines and treatment. His MS worsened and within a year he had started using a wheelchair. He stopped his studies and started physiotherapy which continues till date – a physiotherapist comes home for daily sessions. MS has also affected the clarity of his speech.
 
Nothing daunted, Vais took his challenges head on. As he puts it, “Life gives an opportunity to everyone. You just need to be patient and when your time comes you should grab the opportunity and make the most of it.” His family assists him in some aspects of his personal hygiene but once he’s in his motorised wheelchair he navigates easily and goes about his routine independently. He started a business of selling organic curry powder: he procures turmeric and other spices, sun-dries and grinds them, and markets them in half-kilo packs through a WhatsApp group. He has a set of customers who buy from him regularly. His mother Jamsha KV (51) helps him in the business.
 
Four months ago, Vais got married to Nigaar Begum (24) from Telangana; a matchmaker arranged the alliance. Nigaar is one of three daughters of a businessman father. She travelled to Kozhikode to meet Vais and get to know him and the family before the marriage. She liked his approach to life; she found him positive and enthusiastic. She says with a maturity that belies her age, “What happened to him can happen to anyone. How they take it and yet live their life is an indication of who they are.”
 
While MS has impaired Vais’s ability to speak clearly, it hasn’t dented his eagerness to communicate. Nigaar tells the EGS interviewer, “If you spend a couple of days with him, you will be able to understand what he says.” Bubbling with enthusiasm and energy, she describes her husband as “a loving and handsome man”! She says he keenly follows football on his mobile and loves to travel with his family and friends.
 
Ambitious at heart, Vais wants to develop his current business: have his own brand and label, and sell his products to not just a familiar circle of individual customers but also to a wider clientele through retail outlets. Eventually he wishes to expand his product range to include other commodities as well. Vais has ambitions for his wife too. Nigaar is awaiting her B.Com exam results and wants to pursue higher education. Vais is encouraging her to do what MS had forced him to abandon – a Chartered Accountancy course.
 
Nigaar describes her husband as a man with a positive attitude to life, who has accepted his condition and wants to move ahead. Towards the end of the conversation, he took the phone from her and uttered the words, “Thank you.”