The Knock On The Door

There was a knock on the big brown door, the plank of wood that separated me from the whole real world. A happy writer that I am love to remain home. One because I don’t want anybody to always worry about me; another, I need a person to be of help many a times a day.

My life is limited to a wheelchair.

No, don’t pity me. I’m well off with most of the things. I hate people who consoles me. I am not sad nor am I dissappointed at my fate. I love the freedom that this wheelchair provides. I can sit idly and be lost in many things so imaginary in my brains and still be connected to the most happenning things in the world. Being a content writer has made me financially stable. Being the only daughter to my parents and with my mother demised years ago. I’m the son to my father now.

He just doesn’t accept me as a fragile crippled daughter on a wheelchair, he takes me as a precious gem. He leaves me to the sun that teach me the lessons that brutal life has in store for me, later in the night, he would leave mother moon to nurse me. He made me seem beautiful with all the imperfections I was born with. I love football, my crippled legs are not a hurdle. I play hockey with my father in the backyard and I take immense pride to declare myself as a better player than him.

With all the hurdles that I have come across in life, I have seen the damp grass shine in beauty, I have felt the deep murmurs of the sea speaking to me. I have known love in the stories of other people. I have recognised it in the eyes of my parents for each other. I don’t expect any love from life. It would be wrong to hope for a love that is not destined to me. Who would want to marry a cripple?

I was in a relationship with life and was doing good so far, many a times I would read and find myself lost in stories updated on writing platforms and authors whose whims and fancies never matched mine. Those were the days I would lock up my room and pretend to be dead.

The persistant knocks on the brown door snapped me from my train of thoughts.

“Who would it be at this hour? Is dad already asleep?” I whispered as I wheeled myself to the door. The closk striked Eleven.

“Dad! Somebody is at the door! Why wouldn’t you come up” I screamed, my eyes teary to his silence.

I opened the doors to find a familiar stranger in front of the door

“Yes?”

“Mr. Gupta sent for me, I think his health is deteriorating!” A man in his early thirties, worry prevalent in his eyes walked past me before I could fathom the change.

“What? Daddy?” I scoffed

Meanwhile the familiar stranger whom I saw once in a while at the church and temple gates, meeting dad with a worry on his face. He carried my dad, who slept like a dear in his arms and stormed out of the house.

“Wait, dad! What happened to him?” I screamed behind the stranger

“He got into his car and sped off before I could wheel myself out. It was all in a haze, everthing happened so fast that the chill down my spine was dominant and the tears on my face never seemed to dry.

I hurried up inside dad’s room and found his mobile. It was his priced possession. Never was I allowed to touch it and it was not a smart-phone, just the old sturdy things my father had preserved over the years. The call logs teamed only of a person named Amit. I reckon it was person who took him to the hospital.

I sat there and cried for the whole night trying to get in contact with the Amit guy, he never picked it up. Only later the next morning, he stormed by home, picked me up from the wheelchair and carried me to the hospital bed where my father was taking his last breath.

I saw his fragile body wound in the hospital pipes. He recognised me and drops of tears flowed down his face. He looked at Amit and smiled. That was his last breath stolen away by God from me.

“Your father was suffering from a weak heart! He is a great man to have adopted you and cared for you as his own. I respect him a lot. He saved me when I wanted to take my life.” He consoled me.

“I’m adopted?” I screamed and bent on my father’s foot. Kissing those divine foot that wearied for me. It all came as a shocker. Amit took me home and I visited the orphanage I was left in.

An year after the demise of my loving father, I am a teacher and counsellor at the orphanage, to all the kids who were denied of a parent’s love. I became a teacher, a nurse, a mother, a sister, a brother.

Amit visits me often and tells me how my father saved him from the suicide he was about to commit. how his life was an absolute hell. Being an orphan wasn’t that easy. He says he was falling in love with me, for I was saving the dear lives of these kids instiling a sense of optimism in them.

Though I find my heart flutter. I am not yet ready. My life had a bigger purpose, for the lights in the eyes of the kids are never to be dimmed and I will work for it. The knock on the door that day changed my whole life. But my state never allowed me to give my best. Amit offered help and since then we have started a new life together.

And today is my first anniversary with the kids at orphanage.

I smile as I close my pen with a smile. My journal was still incomplete, pages yet to be filled of Amit, kids, government and the enrichment of life.

-The Story-teller
photo credit: via photopin (license)

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Originally published at rainingstories4.wordpress.com on August 24, 2016.