THE ONE-HANDED RICKSHAW-PULLER

THE ONE-HANDED RICKSHAW-PULLER

Shani Ram lost his left hand in an accident a few years ago but instead of taking up another occupation he still continues as a rickshaw-puller. He wears a piece of linen in a manner that customers don’t notice his handicap in the first look.

            The previous night, I saw him in his usual corner smoking a bidi with some style. When I asked him to take me to the hospital where I work, he accosted me with a greeting and queried, “Son, do you go there every day? Perhaps you don’t recognize me but I have taken you to that place three times!”

I wondered how I could forget that skinny and bald old man whose spine was greatly curved and the malar bones so very prominent above the hollowed out cheeks besides the sunken eyes and the strikingly protruding nose, with his characteristic raspy voice, the strength of which matched his bodily tenacity that delivered the painfully slow pace to his vehicle on which I had the experience of a ride not once but thrice, like he mentioned, without ever being able to shake off the feeling of an eerily pleasurable deathly ambience all throughout! Above all, he was a case of below-elbow amputation and thus an inspiring example of overcoming a handicap. So it would be insulting to my memory if I did not remember him when he could keep in mind a commonplace man with a black bag like so many others among his customers!

Enriching his ghostly appearance is his unexpected mild manners. Though he always asks for only forty bucks, I am used to giving him ten extra, which is however only his due because it is equal to what others demand for that distance!