Step 1: Rheumatic heart disease causes chronic, repeated immune-mediated injury to the mitral valve.
Step 2: Over time this leads to thickening of the valve leaflets, fibrosis, commissural fusion, and calcification, with shortening and fusion of the chordae tendineae.
Step 3: The resulting narrowed, funnel-shaped orifice gives the classic fish-mouth or buttonhole appearance of mitral stenosis, so option (b) (calcification and fibrosis) is correct.
Step 4: Valve rupture (a) and ventricular hypertrophy (c) do not produce the fish-mouth orifice, making them incorrect.