How a person of determination looks back at life

I'm not being hyperbolic. I really couldn’t believe or comprehend what my little sister told me a while ago over the phone. We hardly talk but get to know about each other’s wellbeing from different familial sources. She dropped the bombshell with a titter that kept echoing in my ears. I could visualise an impish glee lighting up her face.

“What?! Are you kidding?” I was kinda irritated.

“No chettan (brother), just as true as can be. Coming Friday is my last day in the office.”

“But why? Did you resign?”

“Sixty is the federal government’s retirement age in India. So, it’s time.” Sujaya did not sound overly sad, unlike other sisters, who in a similar predicament a couple of years ago, sounded as if an apocalyptic countdown had just begun.

But how did my li'l sister hit 60 in the blink of an eye? She is the youngest of our five-sibling team. Crippled by polio at the age of one, when a vaccine was being experimented in countries like the US, Canada and Russia, she was a teardrop we preserved as a gleaming jewel in the household.

No page was left unturned in the medical books of the early sixties to make her stand on two legs. We tried allopathy. Ayurveda, homeopathy and alternative medicines of same ilk were experimented on her, but soon we came to grip with the reality that her right limb was crippled permanently. The agonising sight of our mother walking with a stagger, a school-going polio victim hanging from her shoulders, broke every heart we knew. Fending off a tidal wave of sympathy and stigma was more gruelling for the family than grappling with her life.

But we never let disability come in her way to acquiring knowledge. Growing up in a fishing village, our transportation system was so primitive that the nearest bus stop was two km away. The only secondary school was at an equal distance, which kids trudged through muddy paddy fields and lush cashew groves. The concept of a wheelchair was unknown to us. No one in the neighbourhood owned a vehicle. There were no dedicated services anywhere for the physically challenged.

To spare my little sister of the taxing trek to school — one step at a time, with a few moments of pause every five minutes — we found her a place in a hostel for orphans with a weekly trip back home. On Monday mornings when it was time to go back to the hostel, she would wake up at 4am and holler, begging and pleading with every member of the family not to send her away. Her cries of “I don’t want to go” would reverberate across the neighbourhood. She would later cave in and begin her voyage to the bus stop. A year later, she was back home, resuming her saga of limping to the school and back every day, joining our gang of ruffians to steal mangoes and what not.

But how did my li'l sister hit 60 in the blink of an eye? It seems like only yesterday that I carted her around on my cycle. It seems like only yesterday that she threw tantrums to get a lollipop at a village fair. It seems like only yesterday that she passed out of the Seraphic Convent School. It seems like only yesterday that she tied the knot to a godsend and raised two kids.

suresh@khaleejtimes.com