Dark Lights

However,all this while,there was one thing that she was very cleverly hiding from her colleague,friends,supervisors and bosses — that,she was almost blind. Almost — because she could not see anything apart from shadowy figures and blurry images and she could not read either. Macular degeneration of the retina had hit her when she was 12,and there was no known cure for it. “My parents attuned my mind in such a way that I never took my disability per se. I didn’t make a fuss out of it but I knew my company would,and that’s why I didn’t want them to know it,” she says. “The excuse that I put up the most number of times was that I had forgotten my glasses,and every time,I had people convinced,” she admits candidly.

Miriam,fondly known as Mimi,made sure she didn’t live a life full of regrets. “I am grateful for whatever I have got,and fortunately I took life that way,” she says. She says she wrote the book because she felt she had a story to tell.

Now,married and mother of one,Batliwala took over her father’s charity work after he passed away more than a decade ago. “You should see our orphanage; it doesn’t look like one at all. It is a happy house with yellow and orange walls,” she says. It makes you wonder about its similarities with her life. While darkness had every chance of creeping in,she chose to paint it with bright colours.