The Accident
You can read the previous chapters here:
Chapter 1- The Introduction
Chapter 2- The Taxi
Chapter 3- The Garment Factory
Chapter 4- The Materialist
Chapter 5- The Policeman
Chapter 6- The Brat Guitarist
Chapter 7- The Transport Company
Chapter 8- The Quest For Freedom
Chapter 9- The Road
The day is still in its infancy and the heat of this April Sun is already beating down hammer and tongs. As if this incinerating temperature isn’t bad enough to handle, just throw in a fatigued, emotionally turbulent person into the fray, who has just dodged a bullet only minutes ago, and one can have a perfect recipe for disaster. And so is the case with Ebenezer, who had survived a close encounter with the cops only by a whisker. His tired body and a distressed soul is not helping his cause at all.
Ebenezer has already left the police check post, where he was intercepted, by a kilometer or two but his entire body is still shivering with anxiety. All his senses have begun to show their back on him. His listening power has dramatically gone down and his red eyes are droopy and swollen like a cherry tomato. A speeding truck, being driven by someone who is in such a bad state of mind and body, is heading straight towards a bunch of stationary vehicles at the traffic signal, waiting for the light to turn “Green” from its current “Red”.
Here on the truck, Ebenezer can only see a mirage- a mirage of clear road with no obstructions, just waiting for him to zip through it. As the truck inches closer to those vehicles, a sudden jolt is felt by Ebenezer which wakes him up from the daydream he was pulled into. The jolt was a result of a massive pothole on the middle of the road, which is nothing uncommon in Bangalore, which had engulfed the left type of his truck for a moment. Even before he could apply breaks to avoid the truck from crashing into the cars in front of him, he sees a group of biker zipping pass him from the left hand side. While the first four bikers overtake Ebenezer’s truck and gain a lead, the fifth one gets himself caught in the “crater” like pothole and slips. In order to save him from being sucked under his left type, Ebenezer suddenly applies hand break of his truck and rigorously turns the steering wheel in the clockwise direction, resulting in a sharp right manoeuvre. This sharp turn indeed saves the biker from getting crushed by the truck, but the car which was running on the right hand side of the truck gets the whole impact. The truck dabs the car’s boot with such intensity that the car turns ninety degreeson the road and the forward motion of it changed into a centrifugal force which left the car flipping on its axis. The flipping of this car came to an end, only after gobbling no less than a dozen vehicles that came on its way.
While the truck brakes and crosses the divider to jump over to parallel road, with traffic coming from the opposite direction, where it finally comes to a halt. The whole traffic comes to a standstill, because of the road blockage created by this truck. On the original side of the road, where it all started, the wreckages of a dozen vehicles is obstructing the onslaught of the rush hour traffic. And anyway, the number of automobiles travelling into this direction is more today, as a result of the planned public rally. *Within the next few minutes, the traffic swells from a state of a Minnow into a Blue Whale. Now, all a human eye could see, on both sides of the road is traffic. The busses, cars, bikes, scooters & bicycles, all of them intertwined into a maze like formation.
After 30 minutes of the accident the length of the bumper to bumper traffic has now grown into an eight kilometer monster. The aftermath of this incident is just too large to encapsulate as thousands, if not lakhs of lives got affected with it.
One among those impacted people is Andrew, who had to make a client presentation which was the key to his much awaited promotion. But now the promotion seems a distant possibility to him as he is stuck in this mother of a traffic jam. It’s not just his promotion that is at risk, but the company could end up losing a multi-million dollars project. This project would have generated a number of new job opportunities for many unemployed men and women.
Peter is another victim of this situation as he was trying to get to the ”State Bank of India- Majestic branch” to procure a form of Engineering Entrance Exam. Only a last couple of hours are left, before they stop giving out those form to the general public. Him being surrounded with thousands of vehicles around, his realistic chances of getting at the venue on time are nil to negligible. He is going to loose one of his academic year as a result to this incident.
The car that was smashed by the truck was Dave’s brand new cab. Let alone what happened to his taxi, he himself has been rushed into the hospital, in a critical condition. His chances of survival are slim but even if he survives, he would never be able to walk again. All his dreams, to make his daughter a doctor have just vanished into thin air. The sole bread earner of the family would now become the biggest liability to the family.
Paul, Dave’s first passenger to his new cab could not survive the impact and succumbed to his injuries on the way to the hospital. Paul wanted to get to the hospital to as soon as possible, since doctors were waiting for him to arrive so that they can proceed with all other formalities pertaining to his father’s operation. But fate had a totally different plan for him as he could not even make it to the hospital alive. And now even if an NGO helps his father to get operated, good chances are that he may not be able to endure the pain of his son death and his weak heart ultimately gives up.
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