The accident

It was like any other day… the last Tuesday. Having gotten up as usual we went about doing our daily chores – the usual cooking, getting ready for work, giving the little one a bath and getting him ready for the drop-off at his grandma’s place etc. Yes, the one not-so-daily-feature was the early morning argument with the maid, which ensued in an exchange of words between us and her, resulting in her ouster from the job, effective that day itself. It went as far as that because she really did cross her limits that day and I must say that we’ve been pretty patient with her, having put up with her tongue which seems to run away with her many times. But that day was the limit and the hubby was livid. In retrospect we really are glad to have gotten rid of her – considering that we’re the employers here it really shouldn’t have been so difficult to dismiss her from her duties, but believe me when I say it was a near-Herculean task!

Well, that really isn’t what this post is about. As I was saying, it was like any other day. After a few talks on how we would manage our commute with the deviation of having to drop the kid at my sis-in-law’s place (with the mil stationed there for a couple of days), we decided to take our two-wheeler, leave the kid there and carry-on further together to the workplaces, with the hubby dropping me off first and then getting to his office – the same as what we’d done the previous day. As per the plan, we started from home and bid goodbye to the little one after ensuring that he was comfortable with his grandma and cousin brother. The hubby decided to take an alternate road – one which we didn’t normally use. This was only a slight deviation and we would soon reach our regular road by going up another ramp of the same fly-over. We started up the fly-over ramp and I was glancing at the ads lining the huge glass windows of an adjoining mall along the road below – that’s when it happened. Suddenly our two-wheeler wobbled and with the hubby trying to apply the brakes to control it, it seemed to skid completely and I got thrown away a couple of feet onto the hard tarmac. The first thing I remember is the throbbing pain on both sides of my head. I didn’t realize how exactly it happened and how I got thrown away – I just remember getting up immediately amidst the pain and looking back – my first thought was to get away from the vehicles behind and check if the hubby was doing the same. As I turned back, I cannot explain how relieved I was to find that there weren’t many vehicles behind us and the hubby too was up and trying to get to the side of the road. A couple of other 2-wheeler riders had stopped and were trying to help us. I was in a bit of a daze, I held my head in both hands and stood next to the side-wall of the flyover – I saw my phone lying some distance away, the husband was bleeding from near his eye and nose, people were offering to take him to the hospital and all the while I was thinking that my head was going to split open with all that pain.

In spite of the bleeding my husband quickly gathered his wits and we decided to go to the hospital which was right below the flyover. We reassured the kind people who’d stopped to help and started on our way. I don’t know how the hubby rode, he had closed his injured eye and was riding, all the while deciding the best course of action. We decided not to go to the nearby big hospital and instead go to the specialist eye clinic which was a slight distance away – probably it was foolishness on our part, but the decision was taken since it was the eye in question and acted upon in that split second. Enroute I began sobbing uncontrollably – the worst thoughts kept coming to mind and my life seemed to flash by my eyes in those few minutes. The hubby kept consoling me, saying that he won’t be able to think clearly if I lose faith and asking me to remain calm and that everything would be alright.

We soon reached the clinic and they rushed the hubby into an ophthalmologist’s consultation room while I attended to the formalities at the reception. I rushed in and the doctor soon reassured me that nothing was wrong with his vision, the cut which was bleeding was below his eye and above his cheek, it had not affected the eye though there was some internal hemorrhage which had already caused the eye to swell with redness. After the initial scare subsided about the extent of his injury, they asked me – are you not hurt? That’s when I spoke about the severe pain in my head and as I did so, I touched the side of my head only to find something dark and sticky in my hair . Needless to say it was blood and they soon found that I had a deep cut in my scalp about a cm long which was bleeding and needed a few sutures to patch it up.

To cut a long story short, we got back home after the initial treatment; further follow-up check-up and doctor visits confirmed that the extent of injury was luckily limited. It took us a few days to overcome all the body pain and bone-aches and the initial shock of the accident. Needless to say it gives me the shivers even now – just the thought that we met with an accident and how easily it could’ve been anything worse. It makes me look at everything with a new perspective and I have sent a billion thank you’s to God that we didn’t have the baby with us when this happened. I cannot but think of the what if’s – what if we didn’t have to go to the sil’s place? what if we had taken the car? what if we hadn’t chosen the alternate route? was that slight anxiety I felt when I switched off the puja-room lights before leaving, an indication? what if there were some heavy vehicles coming behind us when this happened? I have worried so much thinking of the scary things that could have happened to us; but my heart has been equally gushing with the gratefulness for the positives.

Even as I type all of this down, I really am not coherent on what I need to say – probably a few months or years down the line I will be able to look at this objectively and say something; but definitely not now.  All I want to say is – thank you God for saving us, for being there for us when we needed your blessings and most importantly we can’t thank you enough for keeping our baby safe!