Over Coffee( A short story)

I had been scratching my head to come up with 'the idea' but even ceaseless cups of coffee didn't help. Next morning, I took the metro. I always preferred public transport to my car for I got to see people of varied shapes and sizes in terms of their brain. People who offered seats to the elderly, people who turned their head away when they saw a pregnant woman,people who wanted to explore the body of a female with their elbow. Traveling is a mind expanding exercise for me. As I disembarked the coach, I heard a loud thunderstorm and hurried to the exit. I was in no mood to get stuck up due to the rain. You know autumn in north throws surprises. The rain however overtook me and I was left gaping and stranded. In that cacophany, I heard someone call my name in a voice that was laden with elements of both surprise and question. I turned around and saw a familiar face with a crippled leg. My pattern recognition faculties were kind of confused. We generally don't forget people who digress from normality. It took me a while after he repeated himself to recognize him.
I smiled and instinctively offered my hand for a hand shake.
Next moment we were seated in a corner of CCD outlet at the station. It was unusually crowded, I wasn't looking for any privacy either. After talking the usual stuff and gathering whereabouts about each other, I asked rather hesitantly ,"Pranav, how did this happen?". He smiled knowingly as if expecting the question and led my gaze to his left amputated limb. "Well, that took you a while to ask. You know after school I went for civil engineering. I got placed in a renowned construction company. Believe me, that was the happiest day for my family and in their happiness lay my happiness. I was doing well but one fateful day ,I encountered the occupational hazard of what I was doing just like Amitabh Bachan did in Coolie!", he said and chortled. He must have figured out that the conversation was taking a serious turn and wanted to keep it light." Anyways" ,he continued, " the site was under construction and a temporary lift had been built on the scaffold. There was a sudden malfunction and I had a fall, a good one!"
I have never been good in expressing sympathy but the unwavering look on his face accompanied with subtle humor in his narration made it amply clear that he wasn't even looking for it. " That must have been..." , "devastating" he finished my sentence. " I was in coma for nearly a month and my survival was not certain. This amputation that you see is a sign of life and not otherwise. "
That must have been devastating in the truest of sense of word ,I thought but grew eager to hear more from him. "What about a truffle cake with coffee?", he asked as he stood up to collect the order from the shelf. Instinctively I realised that it was me who should have gotten up to get coffee but he was kind of prompt and I was so engaged listening to him. "Sure", I said. "And then I was home, home forever ", he resumed without wasting any time as soon as he got himself seated back. "I would lie in my bed, day and night and ponder over every minute of my life. It was depressing. I fought death and then I was fighting life. " I could imagine what he had had gone through. Pranav was the sports champion of our school. For all the years he was in school, he retained the trophy. He was exceptionaly fit. Infact he had represented the district in state athletic championship and won gold. We always thought he had a bright career in sports unlike me who was an academic bug. He continued with a sip of coffee, " My sports shoes were positioned in front of my bed. My mother tried to discreetly take them away from my sight a number of times but I stopped her. People fix their eye on an object when they meditate, my life was a never ending meditation and my sports shoes were my object of concentration. Days passed, then months and all I had gathered was dust on those shoes. On a Sunday morning when my mother's calls for aaloo paratha and the news anchors shriek of breaking news were intermingling, I dimly heard about the upcoming paralympic games from the TV anchor's mouth. That was a eureka moment for me
It didn't take me even a minute to realize what I was going to do next. And, after two long years I called out to my mom in exhalation, "One more paratha !". "
I was dumbstruck. He had impressed me in more than one way. This man had turned his misfortune into an opportunity for pursuing his passion. Passion lives in our heart even when we choose to put it in abeyance, I thought.
"It wasn't an easy journey ,rather much more tough than what I had imagined. It required hours of incessant physiotherapy and practice. It seemed my body was metamorphosizing in the process. I wanted to do justice to the secret courage that the pair of shoes had brewed within me. ", he looked up at me and with his brow stretched up ,asked me ,", interesting, isn't it?". Ofcourse it was. More than that. "I participated this time but it was hard luck. Hey ,but I am winning next year. Do watch me on TV ! " The winning didn't matter I sincerely felt and expressed through my eyes. He was already a winner. Suddenly I noticed that there were just two more people besides us in the cafe. "Oh, the rain has subsided it seems", I exclaimed." Well, it stopped raining way back." " When? ". " When I called for another paratha and both of us burst into laughter.
We exchanged parting greetings and moved on. I work as a Marketing manager for a well known shoe brand .As I entered the conference hall, I knew I had got my "idea" , the tagline i was supposed to come up with. . I brimmed with excitement as I announced
' Shoes that inspire to run '.