The Girl In A Wheelchair
A Tale Of Love And Separation
I had opted in for a jungle safari in a southern Indian national park. I arrived at the bus stop and boarded the bus on time. I was thrilled about the trip for it was my first ever visit to a national park. Why first, you ask? Because initially, I had spent all my time studying hard to get into a reputed college. Following that, I had spent a few more years jumping up the corporate ladder. One could have had said that I had made it, because this trip lasting for a week, costing around a lakh rupees, was surely costly to me, but only in terms of time.
After an overnight bus journey, we, 25-something in count as well as in age, reached there. I saw the grand entrance and the crowd. I was floored to see those many people at the gate. They were not so many in number to be frank, yet certainly much more than what I had imagined. Maybe some people out there preferred visiting a national park over memorizing its name to crack some exam.
We were instructed to go to our respective rooms in the hotel that was within a walking distance from the main gate of the park. We all returned after a few hours, fresh and excited. A jeep arrived. It already had a few people in it. I was asked to hop in. I followed the instruction.
“Virgin?” a female voice quizzed. I got mystified listening to such a straight question from a stranger, with whom I hadn’t had even exchanged greetings with.
“Wha… umm, sorry?” I asked. My perplex was evident from my response.
“Are you visiting a national park for the first time?” she clarified and laughed a little. She was short in height. And was dressed in Indian clothes. Salwaar kameez. The bright red color of her dress made her look like a cute parrot of sorts. The golden border on the red dress appeared analogous to the rising gold-spilling sun on the bleeding red sky. But the most noticeable thing was her eyes. Her big wide expressive eyes were glancing right into mine. It was impossible to ignore them. It was impossible to escape from them.
“Oh, oh, you meant that,” I said, regaining my composure as I connected the dots that she hadn’t asked about my sexual endeavors really.
“Sorry, should have chosen better words,” she retracted. Her eyes shied away from mine and started scanning far into the woods. Almost like the ball in the roulette gambling game going away from the number you have a bet on. You want it to stay.
“No, no, I’m sorry, should have known, lol,” I said lol in real life. What a jerk I was. Actually, it was the need of the hour that I repeat her last sentence to her. But I chose to wait for her response anyway.
“You did not answer,” she pressed for an answer, this time not from her eyes, but words. The midnight lamp just got a few more drops of oil to hang on. The conversation wasn’t dead yet.
“Oh yes, virgin,” I answered, hoping that she would get a clue from my nerdy look and my answer that I, really was a virgin, either way.
She smiled, and her perfectly aligned white beautiful teeth gave a glimpse. It appeared that instead of brushing the teeth, like the rest of us, she used to pay a visit to a dentist every morning to have teeth like those.
I suddenly realized that the two of us weren’t alone in that safari. There was an uncle and an aunt along with their kid too. Both of them were giving me looks. Strangely, the ugly small eyes that the uncle had, were equally piercing like my miss strange’s kohl-decorated dazzling big ones.
She saw the situation and was about to giggle, but she put her hand on her mouth. I looked at her small hand having those small fingers. The most adorable thing about them was the microscopic fingernails. I imagined her hand in mine, and how her hand would just perfectly fit inside mine.
The age is to be blamed. The majority of my brain just wanted to revive the conversation with that girl. The nerdy side of my brain was cussing the rest of it— ‘You have invested so much in terms of time and money. And here we are! Are you going to enjoy the stunning view of nature or waste it here on some random girl?’. The other side of the brain, or as they probably call it, my heart, responded immediately, “Dude, she’s not just another random girl.”
We were asked to get down from the jeep. We were supposed to set up a bonfire for the night. I was thrilled for I had never sat next to a bonfire. Sometimes I did wonder that if the price that I had paid for my achievements till then was even worth it.
We all got down swiftly. I wanted to wait for her. She did not move. I looked at her and asked, “Hey, what happened?” She smiled and nodded. “You may continue, I will follow,” she replied. Was it just my hormones or she really had the most calming smile in the world? A helper came to assist her down. And that was the first time I realized that she did not have proper functioning legs.
She sat in the wheelchair and looked at me. “Thank you for waiting,” she thanked me. “It’s okay,” I retorted, not knowing if I was responding to her thanks or counseling her for her condition.
She was pushing her wheelchair by rotating the wheels via her hands. It was challenging on the rough terrain, which was obvious from her facial expressions. I went behind her wheelchair and started pushing it to assist her. She did not say anything. We reached the bonfire place. After collecting some dry sticks and leaves, we lit them. The helper came, and assisted her out of the wheelchair. I was sitting on a log lying next to her. I moved to create space. I wanted to sit next to her. She did not make eye contact with me. We all sang and talked for around an hour before it was time to go back to our hotel rooms. Throughout this duration, she, however, remained mostly reserved.
In an attempt to comfort her, I asked, “Hey, would you like some water? I can get it for you.” She nodded sideways. It was weird to see this bubbly girl in this state. I wondered if there was something that I did.
On the way back, in the jeep, I broke the silence, “Hey, you are silent all of a sudden.” “Please don’t take offense, I want to say something to you. See, I hadn’t asked you, but you started pushing my wheelchair. Created space for me to sit. Asked me if you could get water for me. All these things remind me that I am disabled. I just want to be treated equally as much as possible. I can push my own wheelchair,” she said. I felt terrible. Though I had no motive of making her feel any lesser, she was right. I began thinking of all the time when I had shown care for the disabled people in life, without them asking for a different treatment. Her thought echoed in my ears — They can push their own wheelchairs.
The days that followed were filled with fun. We explored the park bit by bit, one day at a time. She and I grew closer. She became so comfortable with me that it was never obvious that she was missing the complete human experience.
The week was over and it was time to leave. “Ah, wish this could last more than this,” I said. I was sad that it was ending, but was happy that it happened. “It could, you know. Modern times, the internet!” she said, so sure of the possibility of our connection lasting further due to technology. We exchanged our IM IDs.
Months passed by. We used to video call each other almost every day. I used to tell her all about my day, and she would give every tiny detail of her life. We started getting closer each passing day.
Has it ever happened with you that a person who was a complete stranger a few months ago, suddenly starts showing a right on you and your choices? To me, it had happened for the first time. She had started almost ordering me, and I used to so adore it. How two people become one, step by step. I was ready to trade all my independence, if only she could become mine. I was ready to give her control over my life, if I could get control over hers’.
On my birthday, she sent me a hand-made greeting card via the post. It became one of my prized possessions. It had a narration of how we had met at the national park in the jeep, the funny conversation around the ‘virginity’, and the uncle’s eyes. She had written — ‘You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices’. It was from the movie we had seen together, the fault in our stars.
That reminds me, yes, we used to watch movies together. Calm down, Elon Musk, we didn’t have a new tech that you don’t know about. We used to watch it in our respective homes on our computers. We would start and end at the same time. This way, we would feel we are watching it together.
“You need to go see a doctor, please, I’m begging you,” she said. I had been down with fever for the third day in a row. The concern in her voice was the second thing that I could not ignore about her. First being her eyes. Growing up, I had felt the number of people being genuinely concerned about someone else was almost close to the number of tigers left in that national park we had visited. She was one of them. She was my tiger. When did she become my strength? These things that your heart does, offloading something core on someone else, that is trust, that is love. That brings the suffering which I was about to experience.
“I got selected into the Divyang College as a teaching assistant!” she said, looking very delighted on the ongoing video call.
“What! Are you serious! That’s in my city! Are you relocating?” I asked, unable to believe that this was indeed happening.
“Of course! I am! I’m so happy! I have had been applying here for so long now,” she said. The calm in her voice was similar to the calm of a soldier returning home after the war.
I helped her in relocation, documentation, and house hunting. Her college was for the differently-abled people. Most of the appointed faculties were also disabled. It was a community of people gaining new abilities via the college to overcome their lack of physical ability in the real world.
She started remaining busy. When she would be home, she would still be busy with college work. It seemed hectic, but to see her so engaged and feeling belonged somewhere gave me happiness. I started to miss her in a way, even though she was now nearer to me, living almost next door, in the same city. Had we been in different cities, would we still have been closer? At least closer than this? — I wondered.
“It’s been quite a while since we have seen a movie together,” I complained.
“I know, I am so sorry. It is just a little bit hectic here. Yesterday I had completed the entire curriculum report. And today they asked me to redo it because of the sudden change of dean’s mind,” she was trying to justify when I cut her off, “Hey, it’s okay. Next week?”
“Umm…,” she said hesitantly.
I really missed her previous version.
“No, I can’t go beyond with you than this friendship,” she said and looked away. Her eyes tried holding the tears in the eyelids, but few drops ran across her flawless fair cheeks anyway. Is it inhuman to find the beauty of a person even when they’re crying?
I had called her home. Seeing her drifting away from me bit by bit had made me want her even more. After she had moved to my city, I had started believing that we would only grow closer from this point onward. Since that did not happen, I decided to propose to her. This way, we could pursue our careers and yet remain closer. I wanted the mental peace that she’s mine.
“It would not work,” she said further. What did she mean? I remained silent.
“You and I are different,” she continued.
“What are you saying? And you are saying this, out of all the people out there?” I said in a shock, seeing my world collapsing in front of me. She had chosen me without a solid reason, and she was leaving me without one as well. It appeared as if the Almighty was flipping a coin every day to choose my journey of love, and I was on a lucky streak. Today, just like that, things have gone to the other extreme.
“Yes, I am saying this. I hadn’t realized this until I met the people at the college. They are like me. I identify myself with them more than with you. It is only practical to remain in a community where people who are more like me exist. My future is there, with them,” she said. I remembered her first interaction with me on that jeep. After all these months, at that moment, she sounded like a stranger again.
“But what is wrong between us?” I asked. Funny thing we search for an answer as if this is some problem we can solve. When will human beings accept that there are things beyond us?
“It’s not you, it’s me,” she said. With that statement, she divided ‘us’ into ‘you’ and ‘me’.
I felt very weak. I was at a loss of words. It seemed like there was nothing at all in the world that I could say right then to convince her. I allowed my heart to take over, and opened my mouth. Words poured straight out of my soul — “How are we different? I am very much like you. In fact, we all are disabled in one way or the other. Yes, physical disability is very visible, but what about the internal disability? I need a family, for a constant support by my side. You want to feel full by being with me and doing all these things that we do. Aren’t we both fulfilling each other’s hollows? Aren’t we just the perfect fit for each other?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t want to put myself in a need-based relationship,” she said, and turned her wheelchair from her hands, and started moving away.
