Trounced, but he wants another chance

bangalore: ``do you have sudha murty's number?'' umesh v. nayak asked on entering this newspaper office. ``i believe she helps the poor. i want her to help me with a job. i am willing to do any task that my physical limitations permit.'' nayak's is a story of a life gone seriously wrong. a horror that his children -- two sons and two daughters -- are bearing the brunt of today.six years ago, forced by abject poverty, he gave up his two twin sons akash and dhanush (11) to the care of the st anthony's charitable trust in mangalore and returned to bangalore -- the city of his nightmares, with his two daughters sindhu (14) and neha (10). he hasn't seen his sons since. ``i could not go back because i was guilty of having left them behind in the first place. once there, they would plead with me to bring them back. i could not. i barely had anything to feed my daughters and myself with.'' it's a tale of sorrow that simply refuses to cease. in 1987, nayak, then a small hotel owner in thippasandra, came down with enteric fever. what should have been over in a few days' time dragged on and became a major medical complication. even as years passed, he went from one hospital to another and from one surgery to another. the expenses only mounted. ``before i knew it, i had to sell off my small hotel and pay up bills of over rs 1.5 lakh to different hospitals. i did not know what hit me. from a man with a happy family, i had been reduced to a pauper. my growing children hardly got food to eat,'' he recalls with tears. and then he was dealt another blow. this time his support system was taken away from him. in 1994, he lost his wife vani saraswati to cancer. says nayak with a tinge of guilt, ``in all the difficulties that i was facing with my health and business, not once did i look around to see what was happening to her. when she did complain, it was too late. the cancer was in the last stages.'' for a man already broken by poor health, the death of his wife almost convinced nayak that there was no point in carrying on. ``but my children would look up to me. they had no one else,'' he says. today, his two daughters are bright students at the nirmala rani higher primary school. nayak, barely able to move his left arm, today earns a few rupees by helping out with some real estate deals. he stays with his daughters in one room in malleswaram. he still dreams, ``all i want is to get my two sons back. if i have a stable income i could make that happen. maybe some day i can start a small mess again. will somebody please help?''