I never thought that this would happen.
Not with me.
Like every other bad thing in the life that I thought that wouldn't happen to me, it happened leaving me in a lot of agony and pain.
"If a bullet ricochets off a rock in the canyon and hits your co-rider instead of you, that's no miracle Sister. That's an accident" goes the dialogue in the wild west movie, Two Mules to Sister Sara.
So, here it goes.
It's drizzling outside and you are as usual late to office. You take out the bike, put on the helmet (as it is raining) and hit the road. You curse the helmet and the rain as you couldn't feel the morning's fresh breeze on your face and fill your lungs with that cool air to refresh your mind and body.
Curse you specifically - helmet's windshield! You lift that shield and give a gentle bow as the bike passes by a temple. Rain drops begin to moist your face and you move ahead. A car and a bike zoom past you honking their horns, missing you by inches. With a smile at them, you raise the bike's throttle and race past them as though fires of hell are after you.
At that bike's speed, raindrops sting your face like needles. You slow down a bit as you near a turn into Infocity, the dedicated block of the city for software companies. The trees move their branches to the wind and rain their yellow flowers as you move ahead on the familiar road, which is shining black in places without that yellow carpet, because of the morning rain.
You see people getting down from autos and hurrying into the Infosys campus's entrance gate. Bike slows down further; gears are shifted down after seeing the speed breaker marked in yellow and white. The autos which have dropped off people are still waiting on your left. You raise the throttle a bit and gear up. The windshield comes down due to the wind pushing it from behind, covering your face and blocking the rain from smothering further.
At that moment, a auto driver who just completed his smoke decides to take a U turn on that one-way road right in front of you. Not a slow turn but a blind zoom. You are left with no choice; you will have to crash your bike either into the auto or the road divider. You apply both the brakes to the best of your energy, steering away from the auto. The auto does the same thing at the same split of second.
The next moment you find that bike has hit the auto and skid down a good four feet dragging you along. The helmet bounces on the asphalt thrice, drags on it for few feet before turning your head towards to right and scrapes itself further on the road.
Your leg is sandwiched between the bike and the road, as the skidding continues. Right hand knuckles are cleaned off their skin and they hiss sharp in pain. Right shoulder lets out a scream as the shirt peels off from the top of it. The dragging stops after what seems to be an eternity in slow motion.
People lift you up and park your bike at the main gate's parking lot and ask a multitude of questions to check if you are alright, if your mental abilities are intact, if anything broke and where it is paining the most. Your hands shiver with pain and you could barely reply back. That my friend, is an accident.
It leaves you with pains for the rest of the week in every muscle you move and your bike with damaged front brake and scratched visor. Your helmet sits on the table, badly bruised but showing it off proudly like wounds of a war.
What follows next is a series of phone calls from well-wishers all over India. Some condolences: some warnings to "go glow" like those Glow Sign boards on the roads, and some do not care at all. They have met with worse things than this.
After a day's rest, it would be another cloudy and drizzling morning and as usual you are late to office. Limping on your left leg, you take out your bike, put on the scratched helmet, hit the road and life continues.
Just when we think that all paths are closed in the journey and we stand helpless, something happens to make us continue the journey. A miracle!
Just when we think that the journey is going on smooth and has fallen into a routine with the same roads, same faces, and same smiles every day, something happens to change that routine and let us see the new face of the reality. An accident!
