27. MY DAD HAD BROKEN HIS LEG IN A JUNGLE

My dad’s maternal uncle was the first Allopathic doctor in that area and he commanded abounding esteem of the locals of Ajanta and around. When my dad was young he used to say, he had visited them once or twice during summer holidays. It was their faith that once detached  and established away from the family for an extensive period, it was indispensable upon them to make a visit before it was too late.

Those times doctors were to study medicine in the United Kingdom to practice as so. He then secured a job in the estate of Hyderabad Nizam. It was during such a visit that my dad and the doctor’s son took to a hunting adventure in the nearby dense jungle. My dad was not  even twelve then and scarcely managed to carry the service rifle with great effort. Both the boys lost their way hounding after a spotted deer, it seems. They hid in the thorny green bushes not for fear of wild beasts but because their parents would get them caught. In the jungle  they  had bunker-ed with service rifle and lost the route back home.

Upon sighting the prey,my dad in his determined rush pulled the trigger which had pushed him far back in a heavy jerk, lost control, fell in a bush out cold. The other boy not knowing what to do next had remained there sobbing, mutely. After seven to eight hours passing, the family initiated on the go searching for them and had found my dad with profuse bleeding on face and left leg. This episode left my dad crippled for life, making his left leg limpy and in poor shape for various valiant line of post in the uniform service which had been his valiant dream ever since he was born .