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“My parents and siblings supported me wonderfully. I also have a close-knit group of friends”

In 2005, Amit and Urmila Bhatla, newly-weds from Kanpur, set out on a little adventure. Amit, a polio survivor, owned a three-wheeled disability scooter. The couple decided to ride to Delhi to attend the wedding of Amit’s cousin. Remember, there were no expressways at the time. They started at five in the morning, thrilled to go on a trip that would cover over 500 km. They merrily sped along until they reached the outskirts of Delhi. The road through Ghaziabad was awful and the Activa scooter veered into a ditch and got stuck! Passers-by extricated it but it was no longer roadworthy and Amit’s Delhi relatives had to come fetch them. 
 
It would have remained an amusing mishap for the couple to reminisce and chuckle over, except that only one of them is alive now. Geeta (as Amit calls Urmila) died six years later of a brain haemorrhage, leaving behind two daughters: four-year-old Aayushi and three-year-old Millee. Amit, now 50, recalls that turbulent period of his life. His widowed mother Soma Rani (his father Ved Prakash had died in 1997) had been bedridden for seven years, and she survived for less than a year after Geeta’s death in 2011. “Many people told me I should give up my daughters for adoption because it would be difficult for me to bring them up on my own,” Amit reminisces, “but my heart refused to do it.”
 
Breaking up his family was unthinkable for someone whose own family had always been incredibly supportive. Amit, who has an older brother Hitesh and two older sisters Vijaylakshmi and Neha, contracted polio when he was a year old. “My whole body was paralysed,” he narrates. “My parents took me to Delhi for treatment once every 15 days, till I was 14. By that age only my legs were affected.”
 
Ved Prakash, who ran a coal business he started in 1955, encouraged him to study although schools had no special arrangements for children with disabilities; Hitesh used to take him to and fro. Amit did his BSc in Biology and a year-long computer course as well. Ved Prakash divided his coal business between his two sons and they kept it going for as long as it was viable.
 
“I have also been blessed with the most wonderful friends, in school and in my neighbourhood,” says Amit who is now a wheelchair-user. “They never made me feel different.” In fact he still keeps in close touch with his classmates from fifth standard; around 20 of them formed a group and they often meet.
 
After both Geeta and Soma Rani died, Amit took charge of the girls. He would get up early to make their breakfast and send them to school. “Initially it was a little tough but then I got used to it,” he says. Around this time he had started shutting down his coal business and ventured into the real estate business, which he could handle on the phone. Later, he hired a cook.
 
Millee tells us, “After we lost our mom, dad has been the one who always took care of us – though he scolded us when we were being naughty! We both are very close to him.” Aayushi is doing her BA and Millee, BSc. Amit’s only wish for his daughters is that they become independent. “It doesn’t matter what kind of job they do,” he says, “but they should be self-reliant.”
 
He himself has been a shining example of self-reliance. He narrates how in 2014 the kids had summer vacation and he had time on his hands. On an impulse, without warning his family, he took off on his scooter once again, riding 500-plus km to Delhi. It took him eight to nine hours although this time the Yamuna expressway eased his entry into the capital. He stayed in Delhi for a week and returned the same way. “My family was shocked,” he says.
 
These days he spends most of his time at home, dealing in real estate on the phone, listening to music (especially Kishore Kumar songs, “Tum Aa Gaye Ho” being his favourite). “Now that the girls have grown up I can relax,” he says. The single parent can take a well-deserved break and – why not? – go on more solo adventures.