The Magic Foot Journey

Like thousands before him, Mohammed Safeek journeyed to Jaipur looking for his own miracle.

Badly twisted by polio, his legs are just thin, spindly branches. He can move only by shoving himself along the ground.

For years, he endured the indignity of hauling himself through the crowded, filthy streets of his hometown outside Calcutta. Finally, he decided he had to have something better. His goal: one of the hand-pedaled three-wheeled wheelchairs common across the developing world.

He heard from a policeman that there was a clinic in this north Indian city, 800 miles from his home, where he could get one. So Mohammed — all of 9 years old — came on his own.

"My father is a drunk, he's gone all the time," Mohammed says. "My stepmother doesn't care about me. She said, 'Get on your way."'

Life, it would seem, had made things impossible for Mohammed. He has no real parents, no money and even his size would appear to work against him: With his twisted legs his head is, at most, two feet off the ground. He's never gone to school — his father wouldn't pay for it.

But Mohammed is also fluent in several languages, worldly and deeply curious. Listen to him talk, and there is nothing to invite pity.

In his younger days, he says, he took a trip to Bombay, some 1,050 miles from home. He liked the city, but didn't stay long. "I just went for an outing," he says with a shrug.

He's also willing to exploit his disability if need be, laughing when asked how he traveled across India by train with no ticket and no money.

"The ticket collectors feared me," he says. "How could they demand a ticket of someone like me?"

Other passengers fed and looked out for him, and when he got to Jaipur, a policemen gave him 10 rupees (20 cents) for taxi fare and pointed him to the Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti clinic.

Clinic workers want Mohammed to stay in Jaipur. They've found a school for him here, and arranged for a small, custom-made tricycle. But he wants to go home first.

He says he needs to tell his family that he's moving, but it's clear what he really wants is to show off his new chair.

"As soon as I get my tricycle, I'll get a ticket and take my cycle and go back to Calcutta," he says, smiling broadly. "Then I'll come back here."