Becoming doctors isn’t a tall order for Mumbai tailor’s ‘dwarf’ daughters

Mohammed.Wajihuddin@timesgroup.com

Mumbai:29.11.2020

For years their diminutive stature made some wonder if they would do anything meaningful with their lives, but the Idrisi sisters—Zubaida, 23, who is 3.5-foot tall and Humaira, 22, who is 3.9—have already become mini-celebrities in their Nagpada neighbourhood. They qualified in this year’s medical entrance exam (NEET) and recently secured their MBBS admission — Humaira has got into Topiwala Nair Medical College at Mumbai Central and Zubaida at Government Medical College in Jalgaon.

The Idrisi sisters who live with three other siblings and parents—father Ahsanullah who is a tailor and mother Rukhsar a homemaker—in the crowded Kazipura locality could not have made it to the MBBS course but for a chance meeting with Ashfaque Moosa of Khidmat Charitable Trust last year.

A local NGO runs a dispensary in a corner of P T Mane Garden at Nagpada, which Zubaida and Humaira visited to pick up medicine for their grandmother. Moosa, who is called Ashfaque bhai, was at the dispensary then and asked the two about their education. On hearing that they had abandoned their dream to be doctors and subsequently graduated in science from the nearby Maharashtra College, Ashfaque bhai told them to not give up on it. “If a six-footer needs 600 marks in NEET to get into MBBS, you need less than half of that,” he joked. On further enquiries, the sisters found their condition was covered in the reserved category of “differently disabled” and they could take a shot at NEET.

“Ashfaque uncle hamari gudiyon ke liye farishta bankar aae (Ashfaque uncle came as an angel for my dolls),” says the sisters’ burqa-clad mother Rukhsar. “He showed them the path and my beloved daughters never looked back since the day they met him.”

Ashfaque Bhai says the girls had full support of their poor parents but were discouraged from even trying to clear NEET. “Someone told them to become lab technicians or join BUMS, a Unani medicine course. But I saw the burning desire in them and that desire only needed a proper direction,” says Ashfaque bhai who helps arrange scholarships for needy and deserving students.

Full report on www.toi.in

SUPER SIBLINGS: Zubaida (L), who at 23 stands at 3.5ft, and Humaira, 22, and 3.9ft tall, with their mother Rukhsa