A sad little story

 Parveen’s left leg is afflicted with polio. Earlier he had a seventy percent invalid card that entitled him for a little pension. Further, there was a possibility of getting a small government job under the disability quota. But at the time of the card’s renewal, the CMO at the district civil hospital was in the foulest of a mood. Was he beaten by his wife on that day? No. He had been publicly shamed by the health minister who suddenly arrived for an inspection of the facility. Having lost his composure and looking for the means to scatter his woes upon those who stood at the mercy of his mood, he looked at Parveen from a new angle, an angle of vendetta, and found him just thirty-five percent disabled. As if angels suddenly materialized and healed Parveen overnight, as if providence was on a pleasure tour and half-cut the poor boy’s bitterness. Parveen thus lost his little pension as well as the slim chance of getting a peon level job in some government office.

Fate seems to have found him an easy target to rob him further. Parveen was doing a job at a warehouse of second-hand books, performing his job very seriously. He was riding pillion with an office colleague when a speeding car hit the bike. He now has a big fracture on his strong right thigh and a rod implanted to support his bone. Sometimes, the fate’s affrighted whimsies take fancy for you and your miseries just pile up. And you will have angry CMOs and speed masters, all safe with their stylish criminalities, spoiling your little world, robbing you of even the little-little pieces of life’s joy. I have seen him trying his level best to be self-standing in life. An honest boy with limping normalcy, a kind of smooth peculiarity. But as of now he is totally dependent upon his family.