Reena never let it GET HER DOWN

"Reena konnak beena” (Reena doesn’t get scared of anyone) was the word on the street when years ago, a feisty twelve-year-old Reena Borkar zipped away on a two-wheeler in Tanki, Quepem, to pick her siblings or do some bank work in the village.
Those were still the words on the street in 1999, only this time it was much more serious than a traffic violation.This spirited girl was battling with a rare form of juvenile arthritis which crippled her joints and left her wheelchair bound taking away her childhood.
“Doctors said she would never walk again. She couldn’t even turn. One of the doctors advised us to stop wasting money on her treatment as he said it was only a matter of time before she would die. He told us to save the money for our two other children,” Ranjita, her mother recalls.
With a middle-class family income, Reena’s diagnosis was a blow to the family emotionally and financially. “My father had to carry me everywhere. My baby brother would write letters to God asking him to cure me,” Reena says as her father disappears into another room unable to hold back tears.
Battling with every bone of determination she had in her, Reena didn’t lose hope. What she did give up was all the “false hope that the doctors gave me”. I questioned them and realized their efforts were futile. My parents tried everything from allopathy to homeopathy. But by then I gave up on medicine and left everything up to God, she says. Born to parents in an inter-faith marriage, Reena shares that her medical condition brought her “closer to Jesus Christ”.
But the excruciating pain aside, Reena was not prepared to give up on ambition as yet. With a dream to become an ophthalmologist back then, Reena says she cried most when her teachers advised her to drop science as they didn't think she would be able to cope with the schedules due to her poor attendance and the fact that she would have to climb a lot of stairs to get to her classes. Opting to study humanities, she secured the third rank in the state at the higher-secondary level despite the agonizing pain. “I chose to study mass communication at St Xavier’s college, Mapusa, and used a walking stick to get around. I topped there as well. Moving there was a huge challenge as I could barely comb my hair let alone live in a hostel. My father managed to get a job in Mapusa and the family moved there. “I got a small student loan for some of my expenses. But it was the aid I got from the Indian Students Educational Aid Foundation that got me through. Founder Rudolf Shwartz, Jacob Mathew, the organization’s president, as well as my sponsor Waltraud Kunst ensured that not just my education, but my expensive medical bills were taken care of too. When most of my extended family had abandoned me, I found a new family in them,” she shares.
“Reena is an exceptional young lady. I got to know her through her scholarship application. She was in a lot of pain. So we tried to help her with her medical treatment too. But when there was no improvement, I took her medical reports to a specialist in Germany who coordinated with the late Dr Manuel Soares associated with our organization in Goa. She started showing signs of improvement,” shares Shwartz via email from Germany.
As if the physical pain wasn't agonizing enough, Reena found she had to deal with a lot of negativity and uninformed opinions. Miffed with insensitive comments made my people around her, Reena channelized her frustration into poetry and titled her angst ‘Identify your mental handicap’.
Having been “miraculously cured” except for a few reminders of the crippling disease, Reena is now a professional working in a starred hotel in Pune and making up for lost time. She became one of the youngest recipients of the runners-up award for the marketing & PR person of the year, at the Hotelier India awards 2014. “When I finally regained my health, I found that I had to relearn a lot of things. I’ve been writing poetry, stories and articles.” With the curiosity of a 12-year-old, her appetite for knowledge at the age of 28 appears insatiable. “There are so many things I want to do. Start a blog, develop my music skills, study forensic science and write a book on my experience and possibly title it ‘Faith that moved my mountains’,” Reena says, adding that she hopes to return the favours she received by supporting a child in need.