BRAVE HEART TARONI

Once you learn that your close friend is fatally injured you seems to freeze. You may instinctively push off the news. Or may cry, or swung into action.

You need some emotional support. Now that the surface fears and emotions better than the broadcast are ignored. Concerns the practical information you need support. This true story will guide you through some of these steps and help you to draw on additional sources of support and may guide you to muster courage to fight back in life when you are terminally ill or injured.

This is a true life dwindling story of my childhood. I always failed to narrate this without getting overemotional with tearful eyes. Please read on to discover this life’s deep impacting true incidence. In the year 1978 I was a student of STD V at De Britto House now St John Debritto High school at Gomoh.

On a hot Sunday of June it was planned to clean the hostel’s big drinking water well. Many of us volunteered for the socially useful productive work. The day was very hot so we enjoyed swimming in the cold water of the well. Slowly the residual water was pumped out to access and clean the bottom silt. Students helping from outside the well started passing cleaning gears like shovel, crowbar, and peak axe by lowering buckets. We stopped playing and began to collect the silt and mud inside.

We all enjoyed the group task of cleaning well in company of each other. Everything was going on well until suddenly heard an alert cry from top “Clear away! Save yourself! “Before we realised why this alarming cry was we saw Taroni was holding his profusely bleeding head with both his hands. Soon he fell down and fainted and lost consciousness. A small crowbar had flipped over from a bucket and fallen on his head while it was being lowered for our use.

The situation turned to a dumb silence and all we children watched him. He was immediately evacuated to a Government hospital which was luckily in the adjoining compound of our hostel. He was bed ridden for about a full year. When time came for him to say goodbye to the hospital we all came to welcome this great hero of strong willpower. He always smiled with charming face and tranquillity and contentment on his face. While leaving hospital he thanked all the doctors. Taroni was saved but with permanent paralytic disability of his full right side of his body. Talking to him it appears that he is smiling at the life’s obstacles telling that you cannot stop me. Despite so much limitation in his movement due to loss of feelings to almost 50 percent of his body that too right side he never was frustrated with life and never accepted this physical handicap as a weakness. He never fretted or looked back but continued to study and grow in his own pace.

Today Taroni is running thriving general stores of his own for which he did not even accept a government loan which he could have easily availed for his being differently able. Like most of us he is taking care of his aged parents. Also helped his younger sister to study and do a teacher training. His sister was happily married to one of his school friend. Toroni too have a son. Toroni’s fighting back to life was purely due to his own indomitable will and perseverance to live. He never blamed God or any friend for this accident or sit back to regret for the rest of life instead he took everything as it came in his life. Prepared him mentally and physically for this and slowly stabilised in his life. Of course this was achieved with the grace of God and by the help of his parent, teachers and friends of his hostel. School administration took care of his treatment bills and education.

Today because Taroni’s good behaviour and well mannerism he has won the heart of all his customers and even from the neighbouring villages people come to buy from his shop. Taroni is blessed with a son who he has put in the same host el where he studied. He always believed in God and followed the righteous path and principles. He is a role model and living example for his school, village and the locality where he lives. He is a brave heart man who teacher to fight back in life not by his words but by his deeds.

Since he was my classmate I know him to be a visionary, even as a young boy. He was filled with many dreams and desires. Over the years, while at De Britto House, I have often listened to Taroni speak about his experiences in achieving his childhood dreams, about his relationships among the members of the De Britto House (DBH) now St John De Britto High School Gomoh and the teaching staff of the school Gomoh now in Jharkand. In all our conversations, he would always conclude by saying that he had a burning desire, to be a businessman someday which would not only support his family but all workers of his business too. After his sudden head injury in 1978 which left him physical challenged, and after coping with a couple of minor health issues, a few years later, this ambition became stronger and more pressing for him, and he began to ask for advice about how to give real shpe to his dream of setiing his own business, due to his changing in physical health conditions he drop the idea of very big a business but settled down for a respectable bread earning one at Purulia, in West Bengal. I lost touch with Taroni due to my own professional requirement. However, I continued to sharpen my own interest in understanding and learning about the secret of Taroni’s indomitable spirit!

Today, as I write about my friend I am filled with immense pride and happiness at the hard work and drive in Taroni to achieve his dreams despite his being paralytic. It is indeed a privilege for me to write this for him. He touched and encouraged the life all my classmates in a very special way. I know him as a student and a person who continues to dream dreams and have a goal in life.

Last year was a time of reunion because due to my professional requirements he contacted me through Face Book and twitter. It was a joy to connect with Taroni as my memory of him is that he is one of the finest students De Britto House can boast of. One who has fought back to life to live up to the true spirit and to be a good son and brother to his parent and sister.

My association with him has been in the way of being his childhood friend, a classmate and a vey good mess mate in the hostel while we both were young boys at DBH Gomoh. It was always enriching to discuss life and his dreams with him. Listening to him I wished many more such brave heart successful students could graduate from our school.

The story of Taroni would never die and go from mouth to mouth and from generation to generation remembering and drawing inspiration to fight in life when things do work the way we want. To make this long story short I have left the chapter of his hospital experience which he struggled through for a year. Last month when I talked him remembered his humble upbringing, schooling and his untiring efforts to excel in his life. The telling of his dreams is not without a touch of his own personal life to date. Indeed “this is the beginning of a brave heart!”

His reminiscence of his childhood is closely associated with his teachers, peer groups, his learning and formative years, which he still holds sacred and precious and cherishes with much love and gratitude; feelings that seep through his words when he talks.

I admire the Taroni and his will to live and fight back in life to do something worthwhile just like any other normal person. First of all he never likes the idea of some one calling him as disabled. He never accepts the he cannot achieve some other can do. He believes in god and himself. He works hard to keep his general store always well stocked up and serves his consumers with smile and good manners. If customer purchases from his shop remains a customer of his shop.

Congratulating Taroni on his effort to set up his General Stores which not even many able bodied will be able to do; I wish him success and God’s blessings in all his future endeavours. I also salute the school organisation through this short story for having ingrained such a strong self belief and confidence in one self that he even fought back from his disability and today leading a life of pride and dignity unlike many others on wheel chaired personnel. My hope is that readers of this be touched by the zeal and grateful heart of this brave heart boy, who has made the best use of his talents and opportunities and never lost the desire to fulfil his dreams despite the blues from the sky on him.

This is the true life story of my dear class mate Taroni whom even the worst time of his life could not defeat his morale, his will to live, and his unconquerable spirit to fight back from death to life.