By Shaik Zakeer Hussain, TwoCircles.net,
Chennai: Eighteen year old Mohammad Ashiq has scored a cool 1,124 in his board exam and has cleared JEE (main) to secure an appearance for the second level and is glaringly hopeful that he would make through this one as well.
Born to an architect father and a mother who is a professor of electronics, Mohammad Ashiq was diagnoised with Kyphoscoliosis at birth. The disorder left him with an abnormal curvature of the spine for the rest of his life, affecting his physical movements, especially his legs.
Mohammad Ashiq
The JEE Advanced entrance exam for students aspiring, to join the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) was concluded only last Sunday. Of the 1.27 lakh candidates who appeared for the gruelling test, Chennai’s Mohammad Ashiq was one of them.
And it’s not just academics that interest him though; young Ashiq is also a huge cricket fan. However, as much as he enjoys the game and other activities, his participation in them is limited.
His parents went from Neurologists to Arco neurologists and back and forth but to no avail.
“The first couple of days were difficult, however, when we realized there is nothing that can be done, we slowly came to terms to the fact” says his father, Jamal Moideen.
Getting admission in school was difficult too, as most of them would reject them telling, the boy needs a special school. But the reluctant parents were single-minded that their kid should go to a general school and thankfully found one in nearby Velammal, Chennai.
“The first two years in kindergarten were crucial, as we were worried about him, but Ashiq loved to go to school and when his classmates used to go play during the PT hours, he used to sit back in his class and did not throw any tantrums,” he adds.
Though disabled physically, Ashiq has ambitions that touches the sky. Ask him what he wants to be, pat comes the reply, that he wants to be an Aeronautical engineer and wants to join NASA.
I asked his father, if he or his wife had influenced their son to pursue this field, to which he replied, “Ever since his childhood he was fascinated by the celestial bodies that he saw in the Planetarium and that led him in the direction he is headed towards.”
His determination only increased when his school rejected him to visit NASA, as part of its outdoor program because of Ashiq’s physical condition.
Hope and perseverance are still the key essentials to success. And just when you think it isn’t, you meet someone like Mohammad Ashiq whose strength in the face of adversity makes it seem all too plausible.