Thursday 12 March 2015

Two strangers, one road.


I almost forgot about this incident that I'm writing about. This was rekindled by a piece that I read last week, which made me put my experience in words too.

A lot of Indian movies have this introductory scene where the guy and girl meet on the road as strangers and it proves to be a life changing moment for both. Well, this story is nothing of that sort, except that I met a girl on the road only to see her never again. This happened on the late evening of the 27th of February. I was stuck in traffic on NH4, a small stretch of which I need to travel while commuting from/to office. The road gets too crowded on Fridays owing to the traffic due to people travelling to the city for the weekend. A large number of buses and lorries enter the city on Fridays and almost block the entire stretch that I need to cover.

Somewhere in the middle of the stretch, I found myself stuck behind two lorries and innumerable other vehicles that stood in front of them. I turned off my bike's ignition and stretched out my hands, cracked a few knuckles and turned my head from side to side. Towards my right, I noticed a pretty girl on a scooter stuck in the traffic just like me, who immediately caught my attention (ahem!). Maybe it wasn't her that caught my attention, but there was something quite unusual about what she was doing. She was restless, she kept standing up from her scooter and looking from side to side if there was some gap through which she could squeeze her scooter and get ahead. It looked as though she was rushing to some place, or she was in some kind of emergency, or for whatever reason it was - it definitely looked like she was desperate to get through the traffic quickly.

I noticed a small gap just enough for a two-wheeler to get through, towards the extreme left of the road. I turned the ignition on and turned my bike towards my left. I took one last look at her to check what she was up to, when I found her looking at me. I pointed towards my left, signalling that there was some space to get through and I started driving. She immediately understood and followed suit. It led us ahead of a lot of vehicles, and with some constant twists and turns, we found ourselves covering a lot of ground and it directly led us to the signal, which just turned green as we got there.

We approached the signal near MGR University when I saw a mini-lorry (or call that a mega-sized autorickshaw) in front of me which I was about to overtake from the left and she was on the right. She stretched her hand out and made a gesture, asking me to slow down and not overtake the vehicle. I understood her intention only after I saw what happened next - a motorist from the opposite lane jumped the signal and took a turn towards his right crossed the road right in front of me. Had I accelerated, I would have had to apply the brakes in haste or might have hit him. I did not look at her or thank her for what she did, and just kept driving. It simply didn't strike me that I had to thank her for it. We reached the place where the road branches into two and I had to take the left to reach Anna Nagar. I looked towards my right and looked at her. She looked at me and nodded her head (and probably said something too). I nodded my head in return and took the road on the left, only to see her never again.

This brought two thoughts in my head -

1. Instant Karma - what I had done came back to me. Instantly.
2. Faith in humanity, restored.

P.S: Santhanakrishnan and Neela are two of some of the guys to whom I give an 'exclusive preview' of my upcoming posts for proofreading and feedback. While Neela says that I could have chased the girl down instead of going home, Santhanakrishnan goes as far as asking me if I remember her face, her vehicle's registration number and any additional details, so that they can track her down. Crazy friends I've got!