The Untoward Incident

(Please scroll down to the very end and start reading from the last blog if you want to make any sense of what I'm writing. Inconvenience deeply regretted!!)

The rain had become a constant companion. And I liked the rain very much because when it rained too much I could take an off from work. I could afford to take offs since I was new to the job and hardly had any responsibilities. Life was wet and beautiful.


It was the 6th of July, 2006.
I must include here that the 5th of July, 2006 was a significant day for us grads. We had succesfully completed one month in the corporate office and still had smiles on our faces and no dark circles under our eyes (mission impossible). My Borivali friend who had come to say at our little flat (cause the highway was water-logged and she couldn't go back home- ref. previous blog), my room-mates and I had celebrated by going out for lunch in the downpour.

Now that she had gone back to Borivali, and Office had an off (yippee), there were just 4 of us left for each other.


We thought since we had an off, we should settle all pending chores. The most important being, filling gas in the cooking cylinder. You know, one of those portable ones that have a stove over the cylinder.

Three out of the four of us set out with the empty cylinder towards the market.

To get to the market, we had to walk by the Andheri-Vikhroli Link road. Thats a huge two laned highway and usually a busy one during peak hours. Today, at 11 a.m., there weren't too many cars. Just lots of water.


It was drizzling so we had our jackets and umbrellas. I looked the funniest though. I had my trousers rolled up and a baggy jacket on me. In my left hand I held the empty cylinder and the right one had the umbrella. But the cylinder was bulky and awkward, so, I wasn't too sure whether I should have held it in the other hand. So I kept switching the cylinder from one hand to the other. The umbrella kept wobbling above my head. So my glasses got little spots of rain water on them. So now I couldn't see too clearly.


One of the more feminine of my roomies began chattering with the depressed one about some chap she met at the NDA Ball. Undulating voices kept falling on my ears occasionally, but my concentration was on the awkward cylinder.


Lost in their conversation, the two girls walked ahead while I ambled behind, still unable to decide which hand should get to hold the cylinder.


Suddenly, while fumbling, I walked straight into my roomie!

"Watch it!!" I yelled irritatingly. The umbrella wobbled dangerously above my head.

But my roomie didn't respond. I followed her gaze. Squinting through the water spots on my glasses, I saw a white Alto, racing at top speed towards us from the distance.


He kept switching lanes like a snake, except he was too fast.

As he reached a break in the road divider near us, an old Esteem turned into our side of the highway for a U-turn.


The rest was a blur.


The two cars rammed into each other with such velocity, that, the Alto swung out from the left lane and started spinning towards us. The depressed one froze in her tracks. The feminine one and I began to run backwards, eyes still gaping open at the spinning Alto. Before we could react properly, the Alto spun into a row of rickshaws! Two rickshaws toppled over into the ditch by the road side. But the impact set off all the other rickshaws into motion! The third rickshaw hit the fourth, the fourth smashed into the fifth and .... HOLY F***.... !!!!!!


The fifth rickshaw was where the feminine one and I had reached in our retreat! And for that fraction of a second, I cursed myself for running. The fifth rickshaw ran over the feminine ones foot and crashed straight into my right forearm... which was now holding the cylinder.


The Alto spun to a screeching halt. The rickshaws stopped trembling. I stopped trembling. Suddenly, there was pin-drop silence. Nothing stirred...

"Yeeeeeaaaaaooooowwww!!!" the feminine one decided to break the silence. "Maaaaaaaayyyyyy toooooooeeeeeeeee........!!!!"
Her toe? What?
Tapri wallas and rickshaw wallas came a-runnin.
"Kya hua mai-dum? (What's wrong ma'am?)" a vada-walla asked her.
"Mera toe bleed ho raha hai! (My toe is bleeding)" she cried.
I looked at her toe. It had a bright red speck gathering on the surface.
"Aap log hospital chale jao mai-dum. Kuch toota hoga to baandh denge na voh."
(You ought to go the Hospital ma'am. If anything's broken, they'll fix it up)
I didn't want to go to hospital for God's sake! Nothing was wrong. I didn't feel anything.

"Arre! Yeh mai-dum ke haath se cylinder nikaalo koi!" somebody yelled.
Suddenly, everybody ambushed me from all sides and started tugging at my cylinder.
"Chor! Chor! (Thief)" I started yelling.
"Chor nahi mai-dum, cylinder de do. Aapka haath theek hai na? (Not a thief ma'am. Is your hand alright?)" A policeman asked.

I looked at my arm for the first time. It felt alright. Actually, I felt nothing. The cylinder was still hanging from my fingers. "Theek hai. (Its ok)" I replied.

"Toot gaya hai lagta hai (I think it's broken)!" Someone said.
"Of course it's not broken! I'm alright!" I said vehemently. Last thing I wanted was a plaster.

The policemen went to the Alto owner, who now stepped out of his car with a huge cell phone at his ear.
"Kuch nahi kuch nahi!" he bellowed into the phone. "Everyone is alive."
'ALIVE??' I thought.

"I'll talk to the police and see if I can settle it." he said and cut the phone.

His car was smashed from the side. The front wheel had twisted out of its place. The headlights were shattered and the door had broken off.
The Esteem's bonnet had crumpled up. The Esteem owner was fuming. I thought I saw smoke coming out of his ears. The police called for a tow-van for the two cars and took the whole scene to the police station.

Well, luckily, I hadn't broken anything. We went ahead to the market and finished our chores as planned. Funniest thing was, the depressed one escaped it all, simply because she didn't react!

For the next 3 days, I was sporting a swollen, black n blue forearm.