THE WOUNDED AND THE DAMNED

The night was unusually calm except for the torrential rains of late august monsoon .The sleep was deep and dreamless and augured of a potential mishap or a freak accident .So as soon as consciousness dawned on him slowly but surely ,he felt a new birth ,a strange birth of a new era like every other new damn day .He cursed as usual and was about to turn to the right[off course ,in the bed]that he knew something was missing on his left side .As he was an extremely intelligent man it did not take him more than 30 seconds to detect that his left lower limb was missing under the bed sheet .Overnight he had become an one legged creature for sure .The shock was brief and deep .What he felt was immaterial.

It was his wife who reacted violently to his loss of a member of the lower half of his tiny body .The silence of his home was shattered by her screams .He felt unusually calm ,since he couldn’t do nothing else ,simply because he had become DEPENDENT TO THE CORE ,for every bloody second of his life .For the first time in his life he was jealous of his two-legged fellow beings ,how happy they all seemed walking fluently singing songs .DAMN he cursed .Mentally he deleted his next week’s holidays to the Himalayas ,the coming snd off for his son ,the onam celebrations he planned with his friends.

The doctor as usual was calm and cool .After the examination was concluded ,he pronounced the verdict ‘there is no sign of injury ,inflammation ,degeneration or in fact any disease .The socket is clean and shining. I can only feel the absence ,otherwise ever thing is o.k .So nothing to worry .The only thing left is to file an f.i.r in the nearest police station for theft and they will do the needful .Bye the bye ,have you taken the insurance?

His son when informed of the news exclaimed ‘it was my curse, when you kicked us all out of our house with your ADVICES.

Now the task ahead seemed endless ,how was he going to reach the toilet .Even a simple matter like pissing or shitting seemed like a climb to Mt Everest .Was he going to be at her mercy for each damned movement? ‘ Krishna’ why the hell didn’t you give me an additional stepney of three limbs ?What the hell am I going to do. You could have blessed me with a silent myocardial attack ,than leave me to the wolves ready to pounce. I can hear the vultures waiting .Why me’ Krishna’?

No , I am not going to surrender so meekly ,he thought .If Pistorius can compete in world athletic meet ,I could crawl at least ,since he had begun his locomotor functions that way 58 yrs back .Only thing was to begin from the beginning .It was only a question of patience and hard struggle and he was not a stranger to that .The meek question was his motivation ,which was a suspect .Suddenly his bedroom appeared larger and distance factor seemed to multiply any number of times .Now his mobility was restricted to an arc of 3 foot [ a hand length for sure] in all 8 directions .As for as , the view was concerned ,it can be termed just fantastique.6 foot just in front was the curtained windows obscuring the temple .At 2 o clock position was the now obsolete 29 inches t.v which he was not going to see .At 4 o clock was the door to living room .Behind him was the 5 foot mirror which he consciously avoided and at 7o clock was the door to toilet which he dreaded .So all around was the white brick wall which protected him from the outsiders .He was safe and secure as if in his mother’s womb except for the amniotic fluid engulfing him all around. The atmosphere was exhilaratingly suffocating.

Now he understood the true indicator of freedom ‘ the ability to move’ ‘from’ or ‘to’ not why or Where .He watched with fascination the beauty and style of his wife walking on two legs .He thought about the funny existence of the baniyan tree beyond his front wall. His four wheeled car or his scooty was no match for the simple balanced action of walking .He could see the smile in the infant when it stood on its hind limbs for the first time and the beaming parents at the first vertical position of the human being in motion .As the distance factor shrunk, time slowed down, rather it became immaterial ,it was only a question of day or night ,no more the notion of hours or minutes .It was the interval between sleep and awakenness or was it all a state of dream only .The ceiling looked nice and grey and the fiercely whirring fan, a sight to behold. The only soothening sound was the whining of sreevalson’s dog afar .His only door to the maddening ,rushing crowd yonder was his cell phone which he has already put on the busy mode .The patients have fled ,his friends are on vacation his near and far ones are on the move .Only his wife was exposed to his non ending tantrums of self pity and deprivation ,but for how long ,he mused .He was a silent spectator to the phlegmatic activity all around him.
With one violent last effort he threw himself to the sky and when grounded he balanced himself on the one foot spectacularly .Every muscle in his body shivered with ferocious spasm and the agonizing scream roared out from his CORE cutting through the silent night of Ottapalam ‘MOVE’.HIS LAST THANDAVA HAS JUST BEGUN.