TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION
Friends, I accompanied my younger sister to one of the Income Tax Offices in Bengaluru on 7th Sept, Friday. There one of her friends, say X, who works in the Official Languages Dept., took us to an Income Tax Inspector. This was for certain clarifications we needed about my late brother-in-law's IT return.
There we met a very cheerful and pretty lady in her mid-40s who she patiently answered all our queries. And if that was not enough, she also took a pen and paper and wrote...
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down the sequence of various steps, she had asked us to follow, for our easy & ready reference. I noticed her writing with her left hand but did not give it a second thought, as I presumed she was a natural leftie. Lets call this beautiful lady Rita Nair (name changed).
After we came out of her office, my sister's friend X, narrated to us Rita's life story. On Sept 3, 1996, this then 22-year old maiden, was travelling by the Island Express, from Bengaluru to Trichur. The train has departed from Palakkad and she went to the basin near the door, to wash her face. Suddenly there was a jerk and before she could realise what had happened, Rita was thrown on to the tracks and fell near the wheels of her own train. As the Island Express, sped by, unmindful of the tragedy it had wrought, it severed Rita's right hand at the shoulder joint. Her spinal chord too was ruptured, But that was not all, as God had more misfortune in store for her. For as she lay helpless, partly on the tracks, another train came and this time, it was her left leg that got separated from her body. A little later the pilot of a light loco spotted her lying on the tracks and stopped the engine before further damage could be inflicted on her. The kind soul arranged for her admission to a hospital, Rita was going home after appearing for the Income Tax Exam. The doctors who attended to her wrote her off as a GONE CASE but did not reckon with the grit and stamina of Rita Nair.It took more than 2 years for her to overcome the trauma and come to terms with life with an artificial leg and one arm. She thereafter appeared for 3 more exams and became an Income Tax Inspector. She is now happily married and lives with her husband and a daughter.
My sister and I were moved to tears on hearing the saga of Rita Nair's fortitude and resilience. I had a queasy feeling that what we had been told was perhaps an exaggeration too good to be true. In order to convince myself, I googled with the correct name of the VICTIM and discovered that every word of what X had narrated to us was TRUE. May God bless such a courageous person who has been a source of great inspiration to all victims of trauma.