Cerebral ataxia took her speech and most of her movement. She made Hrithik Roshan a picture anyway, and twelve years later she handed it to him.

A 53-year-old woman from Alappuzha in Kerala has given Hrithik Roshan a picture of him she made in 2014, Onmanorama reported on Tuesday, after her brother spent twelve years trying to reach the actor.

Beeja was diagnosed with cerebral ataxia at three. Ataxia is a failure of coordination rather than of strength: the cerebellum, which times and steadies every movement, does not do its job, so the hands overshoot, the words slur, and walking becomes unsteady. In her case it has taken most of her speech and, over the last few years, all of her movement. She has painted since she was a child, and in 2014 she finished a framed craftwork with Hrithik's photograph at its centre and told her family that her one remaining dream was to put it in his hands.

Her younger brother, Shyam Kurup, who works at a cinema sound studio, took that on. Over twelve years he went in person to Hrithik's production company, Filmkraft, spoke to its chief executive, Shashank Jare, and tried to reach the actor's father, Rakesh Roshan, through anyone who might know him.

The flight

The hardest part was the journey. Beeja can no longer sit upright with her legs down for long, which made a flight from Kerala to Mumbai the biggest obstacle in the plan. She flew with her mother, Balamaniyamma, a retired schoolteacher, and with Shyam. The cabin crew gathered round her seat for a photograph.

8 September

The meeting was set for a studio gym in Mumbai where Hrithik was shooting an advertisement. He sat down close to her and took the frame. She had brought more: an Aranmula mirror, a Kerala mundu, and a shirt with his face hand-painted on it by the artist Anoop Radhakrishnan. He asked about her journey and was surprised to learn she had watched every one of his films. She asked who was at home with him. "My house is empty now as my sons have gone to college for studies," he told her.

"He spent time asking about her journey, looking at her artwork, and assuring us that love and positive energy always find a way," Shyam told Onmanorama. Beeja said afterwards that when he held her hand and spoke to her, the years of pain and waiting, in her words, simply melted away.

Beeja lived in Pune until she was 19 and then moved to Kerala. Her mother encouraged her in art, craft and writing, and her diary notes were collected into a book, Hridayathinte Thengalukal. Her father, a retired CISF assistant commandant, died in 2015, and an elder brother in 2007. She lives with her mother, Shyam, his wife and their children, and a physiotherapist comes to the house twice a week.

Every door I knocked on over these 12 years was driven by one pure thought: if I can bring a moment of absolute joy to her life, my existence as a brother becomes meaningful.Shyam Kurup