16-year-old son gifts new life to cancer-stricken mother

No gift could be precious on Mother’s Day than the toil of a 16-year-old boy from a remote village to get all forces together to bring back his mother from the jaws of death after his father had fled after knowing that his wife was suffering from adenocarcinoma. 

Adenocarcinoma is a type of cancer that forms in mucus-secreting glands. It was mid 2013 when the fight of Ayon Karmakar, one of the toppers of the Aranghata Upendra Memorial Institute at Aranghata in Nadia, had started and he also stopped going to school for few months. The reason was within a day everything went wrong in his life when his father had fled the next day his mother was detected suffering from the same disease. 

The local people refused to extend any help as his father had cheated many of them after taking a huge amount of money to start a business.  Ayon turned 16 this year and appeared for the Madhyamik examination and eagerly waiting for the result on May 10 as his ambition is to fulfill his mother’s dream of making him a teacher. 

His sister was only one-and-a-half-year-old when his father had fled leaving his ailing mother Shantana Karmakar to die.  With the landlord of their house putting pressure to clear the rent, the family had no other option than opting treatment of a quack and Ayon remaining seated round the clock beside his bedridden mother. 

The words of his mother “I want to live for you and your little sister” was the only inspiration for the then class VII student to find a way out. He first went to the local people but no one came forward instead he was allegedly being abused.

But without giving up hope he continued caring his mother and around three months after his mother remained untreated despite suffering from such a life threatening disease a miracle happened when some teachers got the information. Some of them rushed to his house and they were moved by Ayon’s plea to do something to save his mother. 

Some youth from different parts of Kolkata and Howrah came to know about Ayon’s situation after the matter was posted on Facebook by the son of one of the teachers. 

The youth’s took the boy to different places where he put forward the matter. Finally besides some organizations, the then sub-divisional officer of Ranaghat Suparna Kumar Roy Chowdhury and his colleagues stood beside the little boy to save his mother. 

From the remote village in Nadia district, his mother was brought to NRS Medical College and Hospital and later shifted to a private hospital at Rajarhat, where she underwent a major operation and chemo therapy. 

She remained almost unconscious for the next 15 days after the operation and Ayon used to keep praying back home for fast recovery of his mother. At the same time his major task was to take care of his little sister. The SDO had also arranged free of cost supply of food grains for the family. 

After a fight for a few months, his mother was released from the hospital. Being a dedicated son, the 

little boy had taken care of his mother after she returned home. Though the SDO had arranged help for her treatment, their stay in the rented house became difficult due to the ruthless approach of the landlord to clear the dues. 

Later, the local administration had helped the family get a patta of a small plot and a house was being built by them under a housing scheme for poor.  The family moved to their new house on April 14 and the woman now stitches pillow cover to earn their livelihood. 

“Now I buy rice and wheat at Rs 2 per kg with my earnings and somehow manage to sustain with pride. I pray for everyone who listened to the request of my son to save my life,” said Shantana, adding that my mother-in-law stays with them and she still recollects the memories of her son’s childhood.