But while Aaditya had not been able to follow his dreams, he could still live them vicariously. So, for the next hour, he expounded on the relative merits of the various contenders for the Air Force's new fighter contract on an online forum where he had long come to be recognized as the resident expert when it came to anything to do with fighter aircraft. He then logged onto his favorite air combat sim and flew a mission where he obliterated an enemy nuclear plant and shot down a handful of fighters, once again firmly establishing himself at the top of the leaderboard, and more than making up for the afternoon's aborted mission.
At midnight, Aaditya lay down on his bed..
Tonight was a time to remember all the good times he had shared with his father. As he drifted off to sleep, he whispered to himself, 'Happy birthday, Dad.'
He dreamt of flying a Sukhoi, streaking through the skies at supersonic speed, worldly worries left thousands of feet below. But for a change, he did not dream of flying alone. In the back seat was his father.
TWO
Aaditya barely made it in time for his first class the next morning. He had woken up late, and had then decided to ride his bike to college. He had bought his bike just a month ago, and was still getting used to it. At the time, it had seemed like a bright idea, but now that he was faced with the practicalities of kick-starting it, he was yet to work out a routine that did not leave him looking like a circus acrobat, or gasping in pain as he put pressure on his right leg.
Transfemoral prosthesis. Trust the doctors to come with such a fancy word to describe chopping off your leg and sticking an artificial and inconvenient contraption in its place. As Aaditya entered his class, he reminded himself that he should not really be blaming the doctors for chopping off his leg-he had been the one responsible for that. And as for the contraption he now had attached below his right thigh, it may not be a real leg, but it sure beat hobbling along on one foot and carrying crutches, as he had done for the first three months after the accident. More than a year later, when he walked, nobody could tell that he had an artificial leg. That was of course, unless they wanted to see him in shorts or, indeed, go dancing. The onelegged hop-now that would be a sure way to impress Supriya, wouldn't it?
'You seem to be in a good mood. So, did you catch up with Supriya later at night?' As Aaditya sat down at his desk he just gave a look of sheer exasperation at Sam's comment. Sam reached over and whispered into Aaditya's ear. 'Take it from someone who's neither older, nor much wiser, but you need to stop thinking of what you don't have and think of what you do have. Come on, man, — short of casting you in a bloody fairness cream ad, I don't know what else I can do to convince you that the girls have their eyes on you.'
Aaditya grinned. Trust Sam to break the ice like that.
After classes, Aaditya had been invited for tea to Wing Commander Asthana's house. The Wing Commander had been a batchmate of his father's and had helped Aaditya settle down in Delhi when he had moved here from Pune after his accident, both for his treatment and also to move into the apartment his father had left for him. Aaditya always felt a bit uncomfortable meeting Dad's former colleagues. They brought back memories of the life he had left behind, and even if he was imagining it, he always thought their eyes reflected the unasked question of how he could have thrown it all away.
An hour later, Aaditya was on his bike, riding home. While he had not shown much interest to Sam, he had already taken Supriya's number. He may be missing a leg, and he certainly did not want any woman to go out with him out of pity, but he retained enough sense to know that he would be a fool to not call Supriya again. She was a looker for sure, but more importantly, he had really been comfortable with her, so there was really no harm in going out with her and seeing where things went from there.
His bike was almost halfway home, threading through the dense traffic near the Delhi Zoo, before getting on to the bridge across the Yamuna and then on to Mayur Vihar in the suburbs, where his apartment was. Suddenly, he saw a bus careen towards him from the opposite direction. The bus driver was either drunk, or didn't know how to drive, or both, because he was weaving in and out of his lane. At the last minute, Aaditya swerved his bike to avoid the bus.
'Bastard!' Aaditya screamed over his shoulder as he continued home. He tried to think what he'd say to Supriya when he called her, but the bus bearing down at him had brought back other, painful memories.
BK or AK?
That mystifying question had been the first words he had heard when he had awakened to find himself on a hospital bed. The day after the search for his father had been called off, he had pleaded with the authorities to keep looking. Perhaps his father had just drifted away. Perhaps he was unconscious and had not seen or heard any of the helicopters. The officer in charge of the search, a man who had known Aaditya since he had been in diapers, had looked to be on the verge of tears, but said that there was nothing more to be done. Aaditya should have known better, but he had been only seventeen, and had just lost the only family he had ever known. So he had helped himself to his father's stash of Scotch, and then screaming out his rage at the unfairness of it all, had gone roaring down the highway on his bike.
By the time he saw the bus, it had been too late.
BK or AK? Below the knee or above the knee? That was what the doctor had been asking, Aaditya realized later. There is perhaps no good way to lose a leg, but as Aaditya was to learn, if you do lose one, pray it's BK. An amputation above the knee makes recovery much tougher. The Air Force had paid for the best care available, and he had been fitted with a state of the art prosthetic leg, but the doctor told him, with an amputation above the knee, the average patient needed 80 per cent more strength to carry himself along than a normal person. Aaditya had beaten those odds, turning to the gym with a frenzy, building his already strong physique into solid muscle, but he had not been so lucky when, after six months, he had worked up the courage to ask his father's Commanding Officer whether he still had a chance to be a fighter pilot.
Chopra uncle, as Aaditya had known him for most of his life, had looked up Aaditya nearly every day since his father had been lost. Now he told Aaditya that he could certainly still join the Air Force, provided he could pass the fitness tests. That had been the good news. The bad news was that the doctors had recommended that even if he were to be accepted into the Air Force, it should be ideally for ground duties, since they were not sure his leg could take the strain of flying. At best he could be allowed to pilot helicopters, but fast jets were out. The strains of pulling high G forces could be dangerous, and if he ever had to use an ejection seat, his leg would never be able to withstand the force.
Aaditya had wondered if he had made the right decision in giving up on joining the Air Force. He knew the answer. No matter how much he regretted not joining the Air Force, working in it every day, next to fighters and fighter pilots, yet knowing he could never be one of them was far worse than being in a world removed from it all.