Skip to main content

Road rage

We were headed to town for lunch on the 7th of Feb. Almost three weeks back.

We stopped at a traffic signal at Bandra Reclamation opposite the Candies turn. The road was largely empty. Suddenly there was a jolt from the back and a very loud sound.

Turned out that a woman driving a silver coloured Santro had banged into our car which was stationary. We were sitting at the rear seat and were quite shaken up. We got down to check the damages.

Despite the loud noise and the impact we seemed to be ok. No visible damages to us. Our car seemed to be fine too.

The lady driving the car that banged into us was quite shaken up herself. She got off and kept apologizing to us. Her car seemed to be more bruised than ours even though she had banged into us.

I got back into the car. I decided not to get into a fight or argument. Didn’t see the point. Didn’t want to spoil the day. So I barely spoke to her, glared and went away.

When we came home that evening we figured out that things were not as fine as they seemed. The boot of our car didn’t shut properly. The alignment of the bumper was spoilt. Something we will have to get fixed.

Worse was that I begun to get a backache. The jolt triggered off spasms in my back. Since then it has been countless visits to the orthopaed, the physiotherapist…loads of money spent, insidious pain killers taken, days at work lost, social life compromised, gym and walks stopped…and even now my back aches as I returned to office after the weekend …

Yes, we had got off easy that day…could have been a lot worse…but this was so unnecessary..

I mean what could have caused an accident like this? Yes, Mumbai with its clogged roads and bumper to bumper traffic is not a city for nick-free driving… but on an empty road … at noon … come on

Unlikely to be a case of drunk driving given the time of day. The driver possibly didn’t know how to drive, or was possibly on the mobile, or pre-occupied… whatever be the reason… the right to drive comes with responsibility…you can’t play around with the lives of others

And yes the post would have been longer, and not written like a school essay, if it wasn’t for the pain….

Wonder if it would have helped if I had screamed at her then…

Comments

~j~ said…
She should be footing your medical bills! Best wishes for a speedy recovery, Kalyan. Sending all good thoughts your way.
Kalyan Karmakar said…
Thanks so much for your warm wishes J....i am sure it will help....just fed up of the nagging pain...yes it's a tidy sum for the treatment...the meds...gah
Research Report said…
So informative and comprehensive report.


RTD Coffee Market
Ire said…
My first visit to your blog...hope your back is better now. Take care.

Popular posts from this blog

The importance of being 'Nyaka'

'Nyaka' is a Bengali term which beats translation. It could mean coy, coquettish, scheming, la di da. There is no one word which captures it. The term is used in a pejorative context and has a sarcastic tone to it. Used a bit more for women than for men. Has a feminine context when used for men. I posed the challenge of translating 'nyaka' into English to fellow Bengalis in Facebook. Here's a sample of the answers that I got. I have removed the names and kept the statuese as is, hope it's not too difficult to read Bong man 1 Coy.....but that does capture the essence 14 December at 14:37 · Me No ...not entirely. A colleague just suggested precocious. Maybe its too intrinsic a Bong trait to be translated :) 14 December at 14:50 · Bong woman 1 kol-lan, difficult to get a english / hindi word for nyaka. 14 December at 15:11 · me that's the point 14 December at 15:15 · Bong woman 2 oh, i think the essence of the word 'nyaka' will be lost in translation. ...

The impotence of middle class morality

We studied George Bernard Shaw's 'Pygmalion' in school. I remember a character, Mr Dolittle (not sure of the spelling), who made a compelling argument against what he called middle class morality . The crux was that the rich can do whatever they want, the poor are desperate and therefore have no standards to match up to. It is the middle class who get screwed (I am paraphrasing heavily here) because they have to live up to certain norms of morality without the means to do so. Closer home was this serial called ' Wagle ki duniya ' which used to come on telly in the eighties . This was about a middle aged, middle class man, Mr Wagle , and his struggle for existence. There was an episode where he had to give a bribe to a government official. Nothing new about that. But the twist was that straight laced Mr Wagle had no idea about how to give a bribe! I remember our then school principal, Mrs Kapper , gave that as an example of how all of us should be good, honest,...

Just another day in India

I went to Hearsch Bakery near Holy Family Hospital after ages to pick up a burger for breakfast this morning. I saw an elderly gentleman, possibly in his mid sixties, standing opposite Holy Family in the alley. He was simply dressed like middle class folks of his genre, white bush shirt tucked out, grey trouser. He had a red and white jhola , the sling bag favoured by folks of his generation. He had round glasses, was slim and probably looked the way my grandfather would have looked twenty years back. A typical, middle class gent in the early years of his retirement. And he had his hand stretched out asking for alms. I remembered seeing him when I had come to Hearsch's months back. I was very puzzled even then. I wondered what his story would be. Was he abandoned by his children? Was he laid off? He did look in good health. Didn't look particularly poor. Yet, there was a strange mix of serene desperation on his face. What would have driven him to beg? Should I offer him some ...