Car Crashes

A bad night. A bad day. Another bad night. Another bad day.

After the first time, it’s not hard to see that more bad things followed. Obviously, experiences colour your mood and your mood colours your perceptions and reactions; the chain is justified.

I never saw myself the way saw myself yesterday.

A Saturday morning, I sat and worked on some left over work caused by Friday evening’s laziness. After all EoW is Saturday right! Spoke to some old school friends and decided to catch up with few. I read my book sitting beside the bright balcony in my room. I don’t remember when I moved my book and myself to my bed, and went to sleep. I woke up with a frown on my face. I guess bad things from the past few days must’ve done the rounds on my involuntary mind.

I woke up to a call when I was already half hour late. I picked up money from on top of the kitchen cabinet. I drove out. I had radio playing, my earphones tightly plugged.

I drove through my old home area, Banshankari. There were vehicles behind me, in front of me. Two wheelers especially… There were these specific two, which I had failed to notice had fart-heads sitting on them. They expected me to pay for driving a little too close to them while they landed in front of my car out-of-the-blue, taking a right turn from the wrong side of the divider. And this, I only found out later.

I ignored this as another close encounter, they happen too often anyway! I stopped at the signal that was at the end of the road. I had to turn left. I noticed one of the two bikes in front of me, and the other on my side. Upon green, the front guys went on ahead and the second bike turned left along with me. To my surprise, the first bike stopped, reversed and came my way.

This is where I knew I was in to face some road-ego. What I did not know was that the ego I was to face was not just theirs, but mine too. Two bikes in front of my car. A busy road, without a divider. Both of them rode in front of me at 10 kmph as if trying to cover the beam of my headlights on either side, if they were switched on. I wondered to myself if this was done purposely or were they genuinely lost. I honked and tried to overtake, fearing the vehicles from the other side. But I was almost shocked to notice that these guys had decided to go out of their way, if they had a destination at all, to trouble my drive. I overtook them once, just when they let me have an inch of space and there was a break in the vehicle flow on my right. My ears started to feel hot and I could feel a red flush on my face even though I never looked in the mirror. I knew they were going to get me again. They did, sooner than I thought. This time when I overtook them with great difficulty, I just ended up surrendering to my own road-ego. ‘What the fuck is you’re bloody problem?’ my hands raised in a high decibel question.

I soon took a right turn and hoped I’d lose them. While I reached the junction where I had to make another turn, my gut told me I’m going to find them again. They won’t let go so easily. I began to prepare myself for a reaction, but before I knew it I saw them waiting for me at the stop ahead, the side of their bike facing me.

My anger mixed with my ego and my pretence of machismo, my right foot hit the accelerator, I moved at 50, my course changed, off the main street and rammed straight into their bike. Thud! I could hear the sound of my car bumper hitting their calf muscles and the wheel of the bike. They fell on their sides. The first bike, reversed and they screamed and collected a crowd.

I was scared. I did not know what hit me. I was quite sure of what I had driven myself and the car into, although I was not sure why and whether it was right or not. I know my blood was gushing through my legs at a speed I’ve never known. It slowly turned to shiver when this ugly guy walked towards my car and before I could finish screaming my standard ‘What the fuck is your problem, you know whose fault this was’ his hand was inside my car, tugging at the car key. I was petrified. These were four ugly guys. I’d just handed them, gift wrapped, a beautiful reason to get me to pay in much bigger ways than with money.

I snatched the key chain over his hand. It was difficult to keep the key in my hand as he broke the chain and as I pulled the metal scratched my palm deep. I happened to glance down at the floor mat to check what had fallen. The sight I caught was of my leg, not shivering not numb, but vibrating almost bouncing with fear. My leg’s movement resembled a pedal in action. It moved up and down. I could not stop it. I’d never seen myself fall so weak. This probably is the scariest sight I have ever seen. It makes it even worse because at that very moment when I saw my legs shaking, I knew this sight would remind me of my fear for years to come. You know how you have these defining moments that you learn from or just remember for some reason, this sight was one of those.

I looked back up and saw there were a hundred faces all around my car. ‘horgade barey lei, kalage iliye…’ the asshole yelled ordering me to get down. I grasped the key tight and pulled at it one last time to make his hand leave it. ‘kai bido, kai bido firstu’ I screeched with as much authority I could jam into that line, ordering him to let go.

He let go. I could not take the pressure anymore because of the number of vehicles that had stopped on the road could not be taken lightly. Rolling up my window, I gestured to people around to move out of the way coz the bus drivers behind were almost getting pissed off. I moved the car to the side and got out. I could hardly stand or keep my mouth straight. I spoke, with an unintended squeak ‘yelli ouru? Yelli hodru?...’ while I looked around for the fuckers who caused this. 'ouru hotodru ma…’ The useless yet large crowd responded. The guys had left the scene. Very silently. Just absconded.

I was so damn surprised, shocked, scared, humiliated, worried, guilty and angry. I turned around to confirm nothing had happened to the car bumper as I was sure no damage was done. I had carefully bumped into the cheapos.

My legs still not steady, I looked at my bleeding palm. I pressed my hands together in hope to soothe the burning pain. I decided to go to the police and drove to the nearby police station.

Hoping to see them again, I drove slowly staring into every biker’s face. I dint find them. Some part of me hoped that I would not see them again, whereas the angry part of me just wanted to find them and run over them this time. It is a funny feeling when your fear mixes with anger; you never know what you might end up doing. You become unpredictable to yourself. I still was deciding whether I should tell my dad or not. I was still deciding whether to meet my friend or not. I took a u-turn communicating with my eyes with every vehicle around to let me pass. I tried the sorry look to gain permission from all of them. It worked, maybe coz I really did not have to fake the expression. In a way I was terribly shaken, literally.

From this experience, I would want to put down few things that you guys need to be prepared with when you end up in situations like these, most importantly, alone.

1. Right in the start when things begin to smell fishy, make a mental note of the vehicle numbers and things you can identify the people with, just in case
2. When things start to get bad, don’t try to encourage the anger, try taking a detour as early as you can
3. If you do end up finding the problem coming back again and again, try driving straight into the police station, they’ll have to follow you there or scoot
4. If you see things going out of hand, before having a dialogue, first make sure you roll up windows, check and make sure all doors are locked and your wallet / license are inside the dashboard
5. If all fails, and you do end up hitting them and the guy has come over to politely snatch your car keys from the ignition and you have left your window down, roll it up while his hand is inside the car and try jamming/ hurting his hand
6. He still doesn’t budge, just raise your accelerator to scare him off
7. Once you’re safe inside your car, talk and negotiate inside the car
8. If at all, you are sure you have not done any wrong, try and convince him that you wont speak until you both are in the police station
9. In the meanwhile, call someone up who stays nearby or you can get help from , in terms of money or influence over the police circle, you’ll surely know people, just recollect their names
10. If you do end up in the police station alone without anyone else, make sure while you file an FIR take a slip that acknowledges the complaint.
11. Do not forget to tip the guy some money [100 – 500] depending upon how serious the situation is. This motivated them to help you and details like your name/ address will be safe with them
12. Do not cry [girls] and try and not talk while you’re panting and shivering, take some rest before you begin explaining, its better that way
13. Always know that even the assholes on the road are scared

This surely has been the longest post on this blog. One that really has relevance to people who read my shit. But, hey maybe with this I wanna thank you guys for reading, so here you go… something you can use! and be safe.