After a week of struggle, flowers and help come looking for BMW survivor

Delhiites are dropping in, wishing “Get well soon” to the man who survived the most bizarre accident in the city in recent years. On Tuesday, a woman came with roses. “She said something in English which I could not follow,” says Manoj Kumar.

Patients in the ward say she came in rushing, looking rather nervous and asking for Kumar. She left the flowers and went. The other patients in the ward have told Kumar to look at the visitors and gifts with caution. They still don’t trustanyone. “We were all suspicious and asked the guard to throw away the flowers,” says a patient.

On Monday, an old woman came to visit Kumar. She said she had read about him in the papers and gave him a Rs 100 note. Manoj accepted it. He had, however, refused the money that a man brought a week ago. The disabled man, say the patients, tried to give him Rs 1,000.

A Delhi-based NGO, which wants to remain unnamed, has appointed a nurse from the Nightingale Nursing Bureau to look after him.

Kumar is badly in need of care. Till now, it has been the people around and the relatives of the other patients in the ward who have been helping him — to empty the catheter or clean the bed pan.

“I may not get to wash myself for another six months,” says Kumar. Doctors have told him that he could move around in a wheel chair for six months after which he may be able to walk.

Kumar lies in the orthopaedic ward, wearing just the red shirt he had on at the time of the accident. “My sweater and jacket are allruined. I will have to buy a sweater,” he says.

He came to Delhi six years ago dreaming about a government job that never materialised. “My friend who was working in a hotel here said he could get me a job. I had finished my Standard XI exams. But here I got trapped in this hotel job,” he says.

His face freezes when he recalls the Saturday night. He shudders again: “If I return to Jaspur I will not come back.”