Reprobate Times!

That man, old, effeminate with wizened skin, shrivelled enough, with his cane as his succour, tottering to cross the road got hit by my car. This almost skipped a beat in my heart and then a bang on my car window and I regained my senses!
I came out of my car and found him, fully daubed in blood, eyes half closed, mumbling something unclear. He was immediately transported to the hospital. Those ambulance sirens, beeping machines, his highly audible respiratory sounds and his blood on my hands. . . continuously punched my soul asking myself: What did I do!
But, the matter of perturbation was his identity. He had no identifying credentials or address with him except a single unusual tag tied to his left arm.
Who was he? Where did he live?
Doctors kept on saying, "The patient is critical. Call his family."
Even the police were left clueless.
His deteriorating condition and his constant murmur of "Don't do anything to me, unless he comes" made us more worried, as his unconsciousness could not answer our queries.
I still remember his face, his watery eyes when he continuously murmured, "My son will save me! My son. . . Call him. . . My son."
What made us more astonished was that no one had lodged any related missing person complaint in police. Then, who was he actually? Where was his son? Why did not his son try to find him?
His health kept waning till a day when his abnormal breaking loud grasping breath could no longer be heard. He died. He died with no family around.
This whole incident had flipped the coin of my life in a matter of seconds. I was saved from police execution as one of the eye-witnesses on road favoured my innocence. To the world, I was unaccountable but to my inner conscience, I was a criminal. A death had occurred by my hands.
But, who was he? This question kept on lingering in my mind. But, a few days later, police received information that an aged man was missing from some remotely situated old age home.
"Alas! He was the abandoned father," spoke the care-taker of that home, "poor father, dropped in there by his son-The medical man,  half a decade ago." The more grievous it appeared the more heart wrenching it was.
Old age homes, which act as a shelter home for the old veteran people, sound like a curse today. A parent, who spent half of his life favouring his kid, left him in turmoil and chose his worldly pleasures. A disappointment!
 "He used to write letters to his son, narrating him his love and how much he misses him. But his son never replied," said the caretaker with anguish.
He showed us his last written letter which was yet to be posted. It stated as,


Dear son,
May you live long.
You did not reply my last letter, nor the letters before that. I want to see you. Son, it has been now five years since I saw you for the last. Son, your Amma is no more. Son, you did not come for her burial. She was desperate to see you at the last moment. Son, you had promised on the call that you will come. You don't answer the calls now. Yesterday I called, there was a voice of a child. Is she my granddaughter?
Have I done something wrong? Are you angry with me? Son, please come to see me. There is no trust in life.
Your Dad

"Though his son did not care, he always kept his hopes high regarding him. Although betrayed by him, he still considered him as the shelter in his old age and why not! He lived his whole life with the thought that his son will be his shelter of hope at this time. And there exist many more letters like this but with no reply. I wonder what his son does to these letters!" and he added, "and we have seen many cases like this where parents keep begging in front of their children for money to live their left out despaired life," he spoke with gloom.

This makes me recall few lines of a poem - A letter from a father to his son.

It goes like this:

Don't squeeze my beat, don't curse my breath
Don't kill my bud, don't abandon my doll
I am a lifeless cat sitting behind this wall
I have to walk miles and I am old
I have to climb that rope and you are my hope
till I swim down to the deepest of the floor.

I wonder, how could his son live without his parents. What kind of amnesia would it be called? Did he not remember that each brick in his medical career was laid by his father. Did he not remember how his father taught him the basic methods of living when he was just a few years old? Did his father abandon him then?

This life is the tale of blessings and thanksgiving. And the very true saying that expectations are bad is true but with the exception of the parent-child bond- the only one where expectations are necessary. When a child is in his tender age, he expects from his parents. When he grows up, his parents expect from him, as at that point, he seems to be the only shelter of hope. Now, tell me, how shall parents respond when their life's earning pushes them away to live in an old age home?

Did that son not remember the warm embrace of his mother when he felt cold and had a fever? Did he not remember that extra toil she put to cook a special dish for him when he was ill?

How could he forget them!

It is said that parents are blessing for a child. How could he become a curse for his blessing!
How could he not provide shelter to their hopes!

Nowsheen Jan
(Class of 2020)