My Closest Save till Date.

Yesterday, at around 8.30 in the evening, I had the closest save of my life till date.

It so happened that as most of the days, I was walking back home from the office with one of my colleagues. And as usual, I was careless enough not to walk at the ultimate side of the road, where the pedestrians must walk if they love their dear life. Now, there happens to be this bus stop just before the Chakala Junction from where we take a left turn to reach Poonam Nagar where I am currently staying. Just as we were crossing the bus-stop - I on the right side of my colleague - I suddenly heard this loud horn of a bus. I turned around and to my – I don’t know which expression to use here - I find one of these newly launched A/C buses that ply in the city of Mumbai less than a foot behind me. The bus was still in motion and I had barely enough time to escape it. But somehow – thank God - the Universe conspired and I managed to do it just in the nick of time. As the bus crossed me less than 3-4 inches away, I stood on my finger-tips and could very clearly feel the wind rushing between myself and the bus.

While we were standing on the side, my colleague cursing the bus-driver and calling him names, the bus swallowed and vomited its share of passengers from the stop and moved on. The driver of the bus had turned towards my side and was looking continuously at me for a few seconds. And although I could not see his lips moving, I am quite sure he must have been abusing me in at least equal measures as we were doing him.

However, the strange thing is that even after the incident I was neither shaking nor was afraid of anything at all. Since afternoon yesterday, I was feeling a bit depressed in the office. My mind had stopped working and had shut itself almost completely away from the outside world. It was completely in a state of separate peaceful existence. And that I think must have been the reason of my complete indifference towards the almost sinister incident that had just unfolded itself.

Since neither of us two were feeling like walking down all the way to home, we were already searching for the auto before the incident. Luckily, the first auto we asked after this agreed to drop us to our place. Although my dear friend is least likely to agree to this, looking back in retrospect, I don’t think that my decision to take an auto was in any way intensified by the incident. There are reasons for that:

a. I am learning how to ride bike since a few days back. Although I am already taking it in the Mumbai traffic now and am gradually increasing the radius of my territory, I have already fallen 4 times in the middle of the traffic. This has fetched me my fair share of injuries. I have a big enough bruise on the upper side of my right foot due to which I am not wearing shoes to the office these days. Floaters that I wear are also not friendly as they too hurt the bruise. So the moment I reach office, I get rid of them even and walk bare foot the whole day in the office. So, as I was not in a state to walk, I was already planning to take an auto back home before I was almost finished off by the bus.

b. Due to the same reason, I had taken an auto even the day before yesterday and will be doing the same for some days to come at least.

The bus-stop at Chakala where I almost got crushed.

However, the good thing, apart from the fact that I am still alive and have written this post, is that yesterday, after having a quick dinner at Santosh’s place, I was back again on the roads on his Honda Unicorn. I went to Juhu Beach and back, my longest trip till date as a bike rider and had the smoothest and most confident ride till now ;-)