THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, 7 July 2007 — Confined to a wheelchair, former flight lieutenant M.P. Anil Kumar has a story to tell — a story that is apt to inspire millions. The determined ex-fighter pilot has not resigned to his fate.
A chapter based on Kumar’s heroic life is in the curriculum of Class X in Maharashtra schools (titled Kumar Bharat) and now the Kerala government has recommended that one of his articles “Airborne to Chairborne” be made part of the secondary school curriculum.
The air force pilot hailing from a small Kerala village bumped his bike into a security barricade outside the air force station in Pathancot in 1988 that transformed his life.
Fatal cervical spinal injury, two years of hospitalization and half-a-dozen operations left Kumar, who had 700 flying hours including 500 in MiG 21 to his credit, paralyzed for ever at the age of 24. But the tragedy failed to subdue his spirits.
Using mouth and a stick, Kumar, now 42, writes regularly for newspapers and magazines. His article “Airborne to Chairborne” has won him many accolades.
“All my attempts to move my limbs were futile. The pain in the neck was excruciating and it intensified by the second. I was stumped for a moment but quickly recovered to realize the seriousness and significance of my inability to get up. I do not remember whether I screamed involuntarily, then, in sheer desperation. On that abominable night, my mind was in a medley of intense frustration, utmost dejection and extreme disappointment. For some timeless moments, I wished I were dead,” he recalls that fateful night eighteen years ago when he met the accident.
“It was terrific. But life has to go on. We have to take the life in its own stride,” Kumar, now an inmate of the Paraplegic Rehabilitation Center in Pune, says.
An alumnus of the Sainik School in Thiruvananthapuram, Kumar is the eldest of four children of late Panchapa Kesan and Kamalamma.
“It was a tough decision. I had two options, either to go home or remain at paraplegic center. Finally I decided for the latter,” he said.
Now his best friends are students. Inspired by his heroic tale they have been flocking to Paraplegic Rehabilitation Center in large numbers to learn from him about the roaring sound of the MiG, its maneuverability, its advantages and its weak points.
“I always tell them nothing is impossible in this world. What you need is the correct attitude and right frame of mind,” he says. Even students from faraway Sainik School, Kazakootam, are regulars here.
An intelligent boy, he studied on scholarship. But the cruel destiny had some thing different for him. His mother Kamalamma visits him every year in Pune. She breaks down at the very mention of her eldest son.
Kumar was returning to the officers’ mess on his motorcycle after a late-night flying mission when he met the accident. The impact of the helmet on the wooden bar he hit wrenched his neck and broke the cervical spine. Fifteen minutes after the accident, he was taken to the Station Sick Quarters in an unconscious state. “While being carried, my head was left unsupported. The base of the helmet (rear side), which was resting against the nape of the neck pushed the fractured vertebrae into the cervical spinal cord. (The casualty must always be carried in a stretcher, after immobilizing their neck with a cervical collar). The resultant spinal injury completely paralyzed me below the neck,” Kumar recalls.
After overnight’s stay in Military Hospital (MH), Pathankot, he was transferred to Army Hospital, Delhi (AHDC). Neck surgery failed to mitigate his predicament. Though he had brief spells of consciousness during the fortnight’s hospitalization in AHDC, his memory fails to recollect his fight for survival. He was then transferred to the Spinal Cord Injury Center of M.H. Kirkee, Pune.
“Two weeks later, I gathered my wits and eagerly inquired about the prognosis. The medical officer looked up and motioned his hands skyward; perhaps he wanted me to adjure divine intervention. This charade instantly deflated my hopes but it lucidly conveyed the enormity and helplessness of the incurable nature of the incapacitation. Inconsistencies of life have always bemused me but not even the wildest nightmare presaged that one day I would fall prey to such a quirk of fate. The modicum of faith I had in Providence got shattered when I failed to show even an iota of improvement,” he writes in his essay.
“The cervical spinal injury (quadriplegia) necessitated me to lead a totally dependent life, tethered to the bed and wheelchair. Now, I am like a man fettered for life; unable to use my hands and legs, incontinent and spoon-fed. Ironically, the most painful aspect of quadriplegia is the painlessness! It isn’t mere loss of tactile inputs and outputs but absolute dependence on someone else to accomplish mundane necessities and domestic chores that yoked me; even for things like swabbing ears and swatting flies.
“Disuse atrophy had set in within a couple of months and took its toll by altering the geometry of my torso and limbs. The mirror replicated the image of a human skeleton swathed in a layer of wizened skin. Two years’ stay in M.H. Kirkee taught me how to battle the numerous encumbrances and how to conquer the bouts of depression. With a smile on my face, I managed to dissemble the pangs of the heart. The Indian Air Force (IAF) realized my uselessness and discharged me from the service on 12 April ‘90. The silly accident dealt coup de grace to my aspirations and terminated my fledgling career in the IAF. In August ‘90, at the young age of 26, I got admitted in Paraplegic Home, Park Road, Kirkee, Pune, as an inmate to begin the second phase of my life afresh.”
Born and brought up in Chirayinkil village 35 kilometers from here, he entered Sainik School here at the age of nine. He was adjudged as the best air force cadet of 65th course of National Defense Academy (NDA), Khadakwasla, Pune and as the best in aerobatics of 134th Pilots Course of Air Force Academy, Secunderabad. He was commissioned into the IAF as a fighter pilot in 1984 and met with the fate four years later.
In 1990, he started learning the art of writing by holding a pen in his mouth. He began scribbling illegibly but there was little progress even after three weeks’ efforts. Then he decided to change tact and wrote a letter to Sheela George, the person who kept on chivvying to start writing with mouth.
“My joy knew no bounds when I completed the few lines that embodied my first mouth-written letter. Initially, I found my hard work to be a mere pie in the sky; but, four to five months’ assiduous efforts resulted in attaining a readable style of writing. This modest achievement enabled me in reviving the chain of correspondence and begetting new friends,” he recollects.
Indian Air Force presented him with an electrically-operated wheelchair, with chin controls for maneuvering, in 1991. “Motorized mobility, though only a poor substitute for natural one, has enlivened my lifestyle considerably,” he says.
He now uses a computer for word processing and he also replies to e-mails regularly ([email protected]).
“It isn’t just physical ability and average intelligence but an insatiable appetite for success and an unflagging will power that would texture the warp and woof of the fabric called human destiny. Greater the difficulty, sweeter the victory,” Kumar is confident.
