WHEELCHAIR

WHEELCHAIR

The patriarch of the family, seated on the wheelchair was looking out of his bedroom window in the middle of the night and whispered something in the ears of his grandson who was absolutely startled.

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Ram Prasad Misra retired as a colonel from the Indian Army which he served with distinction. He earned several medals and widespread accolades for singular acts of bravery in a career spanning over two and a half decades. The man who donned battle fatigues with great pride was married to Prabhavati. They had four sons and a daughter.

The former army man, dressed in his uniform was egged on by the noisy crowd   as he completed the 23^rd and final lap of ferociously motoring his precious wheel chair from one end of Manikarnika Ghat to the other in the ancient city of Varanasi.

Each lap measured one kilometre in distance. Thus, he traversed the distance huffing and puffing, quite akin to hiking a peak and reclaiming a lost frontier.

Ram Prasad Misra was drenched in sweat but remained unmindful of his physical state as he was mentally enthralled by the experience. He had reached a state of trance, much like the ecstasy like yogis dotting the landscape of the religious city of Varanasi.

After several years of living the life of a recluse, he received a standing ovation as he conjured this inconceivable act. The former army colonel became the toast of the town. His eyes welled with tears as he celebrated his 84^th birthday and fondly recalled the moments spent defending the frontiers of the land.

In the winter of his life, he was confined to a wheel chair after a double whammy struck the family.

Colonel Ram Prasad Misra lost his demure wife and irreparably damaged his limbs a few years ago in a car crash. It was a gut-wrenching incident which hurtled him into an abyss. He was no longer useful to his family, instead a bothersome burden.

His only companion was his grandson Bharat. The cherubic ten-year old interacted with his grandfather with enthusiasm and kept him occupied with numerous pranks, quizzing the grandfather’s intellect with a barrage of questions.

Once a supremely fit individual who jogged 23 kilometres barefoot, earning the sobriquet Barefoot Wonder.

He now spent a major portion of the day seated on the wheel chair wistfully looking out of the window and gazing at the majestic Ganges. Bharat joined him on this journey and was privy to a few of his thoughts as he sat by the window.

Of late Ram Prasad could barely snatch a few winks at night and had metamorphosed into a night owl as he grappled with antipathetic thoughts. He tossed around on his wooden cot into the early hours of the morning. These agonising hours were spent in anguish as he wept like an inconsolable child. At times Bharat would discover him teary-eyed and make brave attempts to console him.

“Mama, grandfather weeps every morning and I wipe his tears. Why don’t you wipe his tears?” Bharat questioned his mother, only to receive a glare. The child, fearing a spanking ran up to the first floor to play with his grandfather and look out of the window. The duo looked at the gargantuan river with amazement.

After a short, disturbed sleep, Ram Prasad would invariably wake up to the reverberating sounds of the cymbals and the chants of Vedic hymns by the priests on the banks of the Ganges.

The bleary-eyed, retired colonel with a foul mood, feeling parched and enervated like every day was a witness to the devout paying obeisance to Lord Shiva, the God of destruction on the ghats of the River Ganges. The chanting of hymns and clangour of the cymbals rose to a crescendo, which pierced the ears of the geriatric person who would often tumble out of the wheel chair.

This had turned into a quotidian practice.

He cried in agony as one day he got entangled between the wheel chair and the cot and fervently looked for assistance. None in the family heard him or pretended not to hear the pleas of the patriarch of the family, except Bharat rushed to his aid.

 Eventually the duo of his indifferent daughter-in-law and blasé house help would assist the elderly gentleman.

  “I have only two possessions in my life – you and this wheel chair,” Ram Prasad would tell Bharat. “No grandfather, you have three acquisitions,” the young boy would tell him. “Have you forgotten the window?” Bharat would answer and the two reverted back to observing and admiring the massive river and bustling ghats.

“What a pathetic sight to witness, didi; to see Colonel Sir now caged to the wheel chair,” the house help would often try and nudge a reaction out of the daughter-in-law. The eldest daughter-in-law normally turned a deaf ear to the remarks of the housemaid.

 Rukmini Devi, the eldest of the four daughters-in-law bore the brunt of changing the stinking bed pan and washing the soiled clothes of her father-in-law, as none in the family would undertake this onerous responsibility.

 Retired Colonel Ram Prasad Misra would once again be seated at his place by the window. To him it seemed like an eternal voyage, day after day after day, with nothing else to do.

 He observed the ever-changing shades of the river from dawn to dusk to nightfall and through the pitch-dark midnight. The river was active all the twenty-four hours. The Ganges was placid, tranquil and turbulent by turns.  

As he looked fixedly at the gigantic river, its changing colours, shades and moods seemed to mirror various events of his life. The images played like a movie in the amphitheatre of his life.

 There were magical moments, some momentous ones when he was slayed the enemy forces with valour, tender events spent with his loving and caring wife and a few mixed emotions rearing his children and grandchildren.

And of course, there was wretched incident when Ram Prasad and Prabhavati were involved in the car crash.

“I wish I had lost my limbs combating adversaries in a war rather than in an accident,” he often thought to himself, as he saw the Ganges change its colour from tranquil azure to turgid white in a fleeting nano-second.

 The retired colonel was always intrigued at both the festive and sombre atmosphere on the banks of the river. The moods seemed intertwined and endless.  

 The movement and patterns in the river too were gripping. He would often open the vista of his mind and watch the breath-taking veneration of Lord Shiva at one end of the ghats. At the other end of the spectrum the deceased would be consigned to flames. This paradoxical imagery of life and death on display on the massive stage of the riverbank caught his imagination.

“One day I too would be consigned to flames,” mused the old man. “But will my family affix my appendage, this precious wheel chair to the corpse?” he chuckled.

The old man looked at the compelling sight when the faithful set afloat lamps on the river which drifted away, before finally becoming invisible. Tears welled up his eyes as he recalled the tragic day when his wife passed away. “Prabhavati’s lamp too drifted away to a zone of eternity,” Ram Prasad would console himself while shedding a few tears.

The Misra family remained indifferent to Ram Prasad Misra’s latest combative venture and paid scant attention. For them this was nothing more than plain attention seeking by the geriatric individual.

However, the housemaid stood watching at the window of Ram Prasad Misra’s bedroom, with Bharat by her side. She watched the cheering by obstreperous crowds at the Manikarnika Ghat as Ram Prasad Misra completed the final lap. Bharat was jumping with excitement and his heart gladdened at his grandfather’s achievement. He was the only Misra to witness the colonel in the cauldron as he fulfilled his wish that he had shared with grandson a few nights ago.

Bharat recalled the conversation he had had with his grandfather a few days back, in the dead of the night. The greybeard of the family expressed his desire to clock 23 laps on his wheel chair at the Manikarnika Ghat. The grandson was astonished at the desire of his grandfather.

Members of the family protested, but the stentorian had his way and undertook the arduous task. As the sounds of the exuberant crowd dissipated, Ram Prasad Misra collapsed on the wheel chair.

As per his will he was consigned to flames at Manikarnika Ghats along with his trusty wheel chair. The Misra family carried out the last rites perfunctorily, even as Bharat wept inconsolably.

On the 13^th day the ashes of the estimable army man were immersed in the Ganges as a forlorn Bharat looked at the sight from his grandfather’s bedroom window.

A lamp was set afloat in river as a mark of memory by the eldest son. It drifted …far away …

“Is it you Prabha?” Ram Prasad Misra’s lamp enquired of another lamp floating in the river. “Yes, it is me,” the lamp flickered as if in reply. It had not got extinguished even as it had weathered several storms.  

“I have been waiting for you for so many years,” the lamp seemed to say … as the two lamps floated on down the Ganges.