"Is it Shaun's house? ", asked the postmaster at the doorstep. Shaun came running to the door. With a peak of excitement, he opened the door. The postmaster handed over the registered post. After his departure, Shaun left no time to unravel the gift package with his bare hands.
It was a gift hamper with a sweet note tagged to it. His eyes were wailing with tears and he swept them out as he read the note.
The words written on the note were, "
To my Sweet Brother,
You liberated my soul,
You made me find myself,
and you are the reason for my new life.
Thanks a lot for making me a hero. Your story means the world to me.
-With Love
Your Jack."
Now He said with Pride, "Yaas, I too won!"
A month ago, he was a stranger, but he has now become his Big Brother. All because of the story he weaved to narrate the life of this unsung hero, Jack.
Shaun, a recently graduated college student, has a passion for writing and has explored various ventures to conquer his skill. He had participated in one such competition where the participants were asked to write about a real-life incident as a short story.
He sat at his usual study table with his Qwerkywriter to type his story. Initially, his hands were recklessly typing incoherent sentences. His vague memory kept pondering over and recalling the life incidents about which he could write. After a while, he began to write/type about his vivid childhood life. Everything, including the street where he lived, and the house where his grandparents brought him up, stood out as classics in his narration. His father, being a pilot had to move cities and hence he was separated from his grandparents. In between the narration of the story he checked for the word count. It was barely a thousand words long against the minimum requirement of two thousand five hundred. So he included his schooling and college life and then realized that it had become one good auto-biography.
Rather than quoting and narrating circumstances which inspired him, his story spoke only about himself.
Somewhere out of the blue, a strange figure engrossed his mind. He mumbled some names but none suited the peculiar figure. He thought to himself, how is he going to type a story out of a person whom he had barely met and whose name was not even known to him?
All that he remembered was that he lived at the corner of the street in his childhood area. He was a well-built person with a brown skin tone and curly hair. He always dressed himself in loose trousers and floral-print shirts. Of all the times Shaun had a glimpse of him, he had only worn those and maintained his stealth disguise. He was more of an introverted person.
Shaun asked himself, "What has he done, is it enough to write off a story?
Nonetheless, the words of his grandmother still were recurring in his mind."That fellow, who has no left lower limb is a martyr. Get blessings from him, for his deeds, his blessings will make you a good-hearted soul."
He quickly jumped across his bed and reached his storeroom. He picked up an old-school bag. He skimmed through some albums from it and found the one which might have the photo of that person. Back then it was their street carnival where everyone in the street took a group photo. He figured out his presence in the photo. Immediately he took a picture of him on his mobile phone and sent it to his parents. But he didn't get the desired information. So he decided to visit that person's house though he had no connection with that area after his grandparents had expired.
He learned about the person with no limb from a street vendor who recognized him. The Person with no limb was not his disability but a testimonial for his martyrdom.
When Shaun came back to his house his vision was single-minded, the story should be a callback for commemorating the martyr.
He began his words as follows,
"My name is Shaun. I am a voracious reader and writer too. So does my story, which will be a reading legend for everyone who picks it. It will inspire you and make you admire it. This is a story of pride and also a forgotten tale. It is about a martyr who was not an army man but still risked his life to the extent that he lost his left lower limb.
Many may ask, "Is it a big deal, he might lost in an accident?"
Not an accident either. I am speaking about Jack, a resident of Meghalaya. Amidst the hectic commando operation to tackle the terrorists in Meghalaya's Jaintia hills, there were many civilians trapped inside a hut.
A small two-year-old baby and a mother. Along with them was Jack, whose house was targeted by the terrorists. The baby's mouth was well plugged with her mother's hands as she was crying incessantly on hearing the firings of bullets. A commanding officer came up to them to guide them safely but unfortunately, he had to take a bullet. It was Jack who shielded the mother and the baby as a human guard to trace them to a rescue area. While he was retrieving the mother and the baby from a steep pathway they plummeted and so jumped across to safeguard them.
The miserable event was that his jump from the steep area to the ground made him abruptly inculcate a bullet in his left leg."
He evolved the story based on his research findings touching Jack's aftermath struggles of amputating the bullet-inflicted limb. He was able to complete the story. He even won the competition, but his victory was that letter from Jack. As, to a person who had barely met him, he got himself a gift with a note mentioning him as a brother. Thus got blessed, as per his grandma's words.
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