The Leap

By Arpita Guru

That was a dark, eerie night. Wore-out, scruffed, bruised, with blood dripping from my hands, I was standing on the edge of the  cliff. There were muffled voices of people wailing – some in pain, some in shock, some going berserk, but the thoughts wrangling  in my head were deafening it all. I was standing at the crossroad of my life – on the brink of deciding whether to take the easier  route or go through the road less travelled by; the leap in front seemed the easier choice.  

There was a brief pause before my feet decided to take off for that leap – the pause charted the transition between where I was  just moments before and now where I am. 

Giggling and laughing, me, my husband, and my 3-year-old daughter were going through the pictures of our vacation at  Darjeeling. Hearing us, another family seated nearby us in our train compartment started talking to us, turns out they were  enroute the same place as us. They too had a son, almost the same age as my daughter. We all bonded instantly over conversations  around cherishing the togetherness of a family. Not just us, but the entire train compartment resonated a jovial vibe; it was filled  with people from all walks of life – newlyweds, students, elderly couples, army men, working people – all unaware of the  impending doom. 

Since the kids were tired, both of our families started preparing for dinner. Just as I gave the bottle of milk to my daughter, there  was suddenly a loud thud, a strong jerk, the compartment started shaking as if it were an earthquake, and the lights went off – engulfing us all in darkness – both overtly and covertly. 

I can’t say how long I was out of my senses but the moment I got it back, I was barely able to open my eyes or move anywhere.  Everything was blurry and there was a wrenching pain in my body. As I somehow opened my eyes and tried getting up, I felt a  heavy weight on my right hand. As I moved around to see, it was an elderly man who was in our compartment and now lying  lifeless. My other hand lay in a pool of blood, not mine but emanating from the head of one of the newlyweds, just from where  the sindoor adorned her head. People who were hale and hearty some time ago were lying there lifeless – few had their limbs  missing, few were smeared in blood, few were unrecognizable, and few even had their eyes wide open while they lay dead. 

Anxious and anguished, my eyes started searching for my lifelines. Fearing the worst, my heart was pounding fast. I was shivering,  sobbing, limping as I was traversing my path through the pile of dead bodies amidst pitch darkness when I stumbled upon  something and fell. I figured it was the gun of one of the army men, just near to it there was a piece of handwritten love letter, a  little away there was a phone ringing with ‘mumma’ flashing on the screen, and further ahead, there was a wallet – which looked  seemingly familiar, I trembled as I picked it up and the feel momentarily paralyzed me because yes, it was of my husband and  there he was; none would have recognized him if it wasn’t for the pair of clothes that I had gifted to him. I was torn apart, screamed and shrieked, and relying on a shimmering little ray of hope, started calling out for my daughter when my eyes fell on the flowing  stream of milk mixed with blood. As I traced it, I recognized the bottle and identified the hand holding the bottle – yes, it was my  daughter. 

Both my lifelines lay there dead. I was shattered and devasted – my whole life that was once fruiting cheer and smiles now lay  barren and desolated. My heart was aching in agony, my stomach was twitching with disbelief, and everything just came to a halt.  There was a gushing storm of incessant tears but I wasn’t shouting anymore, my bruises were bleeding but I wasn’t feeling the  pain anymore, I carried my daughter and tottered my way to here - the edge of the cliff and also the precipice of my life, thinking what if I take the control of the life’s journey ahead? What not? Spend the rest of my life with a reeling pain. 

Amidst the echoing chaos inside me, as I was finally ready to leap, I got distracted by someone crying, perhaps a kid. The cry  became louder and clearer, compelling me to turn my head and leaving me in awe to see that boy, the son of the family whom we  had bonded over inside the train. 

A few moments passed, and I finally leaped. 

Are y’all wondering how I can be here then? Yes, I took the biggest ever leap in my life but ---- to the other side of the cliff. A step  back from the edge but a leap towards life. 

The yowling of the boy acted as the clarion call. My senses started working, my mental faculties activated and my conscience  started responding. I picked up the boy, held him close to my bosom, kissed his forehead, and vowed to take care of him as my  own. After all, isn’t each one of us weaved together by a common thread called humanity? 

I was standing on the soil of my land Odisha which is laden with tales of selfless and humane acts. Be he Utkalmani Gopabandhu  Das who left his ailing son to help flood-affected victims, or be he the 12-year-old Dharmapada who sacrificed his life to save 1200  craftsmen of the Konark Sun Temple. And why only Odisha and why only history, the entire world brims with examples that exude  nothing but humanity – ranging from the parents of Nirbhaya rape case who aren’t deterring from spreading awareness about  girls’ safety to Hanneli Goslar, a Holocaust survivor, who had lost all her kith and kin but lived to give back to the society. 

Hearing my clarion call, I mustered up courage and marched ahead carrying my dead daughter in my left hand and the alive boy  in my right. I indeed needed to leave behind what happened and go for the right as my conscience behested. And I am not just  one, I am many who fought their what ifs and what nots that day, who boarded the train to reach their respective destinations,  but destiny destined us to a common fate on the 2nd of June, 2023, here on a lesser-known place called Bahanaga. 

Today, as I look back, I always think – 

What if I had taken the leap to the opposite side? 

What not? 

I would not have been here, narrating my story as a survivor of one of the ghastly train accidents in history. I would not have been telling tales of numerous other people like me, who chose to take the leap in their nadir. I would have lost the opportunity to embrace myself and explore the possibilities even beyond the dead end. If I can, so can you. 

By Arpita Guru