Veena and Sushma Nijhawan are sisters who teach, love shopping and eating out, despite being rendered immobile by myopathy. By Purabi Shridhar

When Veena did not roll over and crawl like other infants, her parents accepted that there was something wrong. She was diagnosed with the relatively unknown disease — Skeletal Myopathy — a congenital disease where the muscles degenerate leaving a person physically immobile.

Veena, at 54, has no mobility but the brilliant scholar with a double MA in English and Hindi, a BEd, and former schoolteacher who tutors students at home, has never let it affect her inborn joie de vivre.

Sushma, younger to Veena by seven years, is also a victim of Myopathy, which began to manifest only when she was seven years old. But displaying the same indomitable spirit, Sushma, also a postgraduate and former schoolteacher, tutors children like Veena.