Our family had a history of an incurable ailment called Hatnuff’s Disease. Since my brother and sister had been victims, my mother was advised against a third child.However I just happened and since an abortion was medically advisable but not acceptable, my parents approached Bawasaheb for advice. He ordered an

interesting prescription: the delivery should not take place either in a maternity home/hospital or in our own family house at Pathanwada (Surat) but in a rented flat facing west where my pregnant mother should shift in her eight month. The mother's bed should be in such-and-such direction and it should be rotated 90 degrees clockwise when the delivery pains started. And of course there were recitations of Quranic verses throughout the pre-natal and post-natal periods.

 

The result: I was born on 12 Jamadil Akhir 1351. I was born normal but when I was around 20, I suffered from chronic skin eruptions on the back of my right palm. I was treated by experts for almost two months, who burned my affected skin with zinc oxide every 15 days. No effect. The skin erupted like a volcano every fortnight. So my father took me to a Dr. R.C. Rebello in Bombay who questioned my father on my relationship with the two children (my siblings who had since expired as predicted in the diagnosis). When told that I was their brother and the year of diagnosis was 1932, Dr. Rebello called out the diaries for 1930 and 1931, located the details of the diagnosis, referred to a voluminous medical book and whispered whether I was used to praying. His words: "God and God alone can cure you, my boy !" His pronouncement: my skin belonged to Xero Derma Pigmentasso Group, akin to the incurable Hatnuff’s Disease.

I asked my father to take me straight to Saifee Mahal and wept at the feet of Maulanal Muqadda seeking his

benedictions. The effect of the dua is that nothing happened thereafter and I am still alive to tell the story!