Some months ago, I was returning
from Mumbai to my college. It was early morning, not quite dawn. My friend was
driving my car, I was almost but not quite dozing in the passenger seat. This
particular journey, unlike others before and after it, was to prove a turning
point in my life.
I always make it a point to remain
awake for the duration of any journey. Sleep is mostly elusive, if at all I do
manage to fall asleep, tis disturbed and fitful at best. I put on the seatbelt,
check and cross check all the tiny details. All the boxes ticked. Dotted and
crossed as it were.
I am always uneasy in the passenger
seat. However good the driver may be. That day was no exception. My friend had
stopped for a pee break and didn’t put on the seat belt. I may have mentioned
it in passing but didn’t push it. I buckled up. The road was familiar; we were
fairly binning the car. Suddenly a car pulled out from behind a truck coming in
the opposite direction. My friend hit the brakes hard and wrenched the steering
to the left to avoid a head on collision. The left tyres locked up once
traction was lost in the gravel. The car spun out of control, weirdly in a fluid
manner, not much drama other than my friend trying to wrestle 1 tonne+ of
metal, glass and rubber in submission with his fists and me screaming “fuck!”
in a repetitively. It was all slow motion for me. Barely took 10 seconds to
lose traction, to lose the left front tyre which burst in the impact, to cross
a 4 foot ditch, and wind up in a field. Nature provided the ultimate showstopper
in the form of a tree trunk. The car hood crunched, the left fender went for a
toss. The headlight, grille, wheel, suspension simply disintegrated.
Complete silence reigned. The
passenger side door was smashed in so I couldn’t open it. Somehow my spectacles
ended up on the rear seat. No idea how. Hearing and breathing returned the same
instant. My friend was in shock. Air whooshed in from the windows, into my
lungs. Staring at the tree and then at me, yelling, asking if I’m ok. I was ok.
Not a scratch. He had bitten through his lip, spitting blood. He had smashed
into the steering wheel and was feeling the effects. His knee was also banged
up and swollen but not enough to hamper movement. We both climbed out of the
right side door. Called for help. The farmer and owner of the field came to
check on us, offered us nothing and just waited. I was angry. I shouted, at the
crowd of curious people who simply popped out of nowhere to ogle at the show.
Got another friend to get us, got a crane to drag the mangled car out of the ditch.
Discovered parts of the car strewn across the half the ditch. Some were found
hanging from a tree. How the hell did a car part from the under the car end up
hanging from a tree branch 5 feet in the air?
The crane operator offered some
sound advice. I took it. He also mentioned something, mumbled it through a
thick wad of tobacco. It barely registered.
Some weeks later I became ill.
Enough to warrant a leave from work, enough to get specialist treatment, enough
to make me sick even to remember it now. Convalescing, I returned to work. En
route, my father asked me if I remembered the place where the accident took
place. I grunted, not keen to further his line of enquiry.
The car got repaired, and I passed
by the same place numerous times. I never managed to find the exact spot, even
though I supposed those landmarks were seared in my memory. One day I did stop.
Walked to the same area and looked. There were farms all along the road, but
none of the houses matched what I had seen that day. There was no ditch, there
was no tree. Couldn’t find the other landmarks either.
The crane operator had said, “this
area is dangerous, attracts accidents, have one to two accidents per week in
the same spot, have seen people spattered across the road and into nothingness.
This area is really bad, you were lucky, got saved.”
