By Ashvani Sachdev
Anil braked suddenly, causing Indira, who had been texting on her phone, to reach out to the dashboard to brace herself.
“Oh come on! Drive bloody carefully!” she yelled.
Anil did not respond; his attention was rivetted on the scene around a hundred metres ahead on the highway. From that distance, it appeared that two or three cars were stopped on the road and some people were around them. Although the reason was not yet clear, Anil had associated the assemblage with a traffic radar ambush by the police, and had thus braked instinctively to slow down.
Anil’s guess was mistaken. As they approached the gathering on the road, at almost walking pace by now, it became clear that there had been an accident of some sort. Anil slowed down to a walking pace as his brain absorbed the visual information. A man, dressed in a loin cloth and a half sleeve shirt lay on the road, his unkempt hair matted together resting on the road. A small patch of blood, the size of a small blood bag, had emanated from the man’s head and glistened on the road.
“Stop. Stop. Stop. STOP.” Indira’s decibel level arose with each repeated command to stop, even as she gripped Anil’s left arm.
“I think we should drive on.” Anil said but started easing off to the left
“But the guy is obviously very seriously injured. A head injury at that. He needs help immediately.”
“Sure he does. But there are other people around him before us. They will take him to a hospital. Or call an ambulance. Or whatever.”
“We are on a highway and far from a town. It may take a long time for an ambulance to arrive.” Anil had stopped the car by then.
“That is not our bloody problem. Those guys already here will look after him. Let us go. We need to reach home before dark.”
Indira gave him a withering look and got out of the car even while Anil tried to hold her back. She wrenched her arm away from his grip and got out of the car. He kept sitting in the car, impatient to leave the scene and carry on homewards.
Indira was back after a couple of minutes and slid into her seat. “There is no connectivity here and so no one has been able to call an ambulance.”
“So why don’t we move on and call an ambulance from wherever we get connectivity?” “You don’t understand. He may die if he does not reach a hospital soon.” “So let us move and call an ambulance the moment we can.”
“No, we need to take him in our car to a hospital.”
“I am not getting that shabby man into our car.” Anil looked back at the seat covers he took pride in keeping clean and spotless. “And all that blood oozing from his head…… the car seat covers would have to be changed, I am sure. We can’t afford that.”
“You are comparing the cost of a car seat cover to a man’s life. That is rather low, don’t you think?”
“Don’t try and teach me all this philosophy. Be practical.”
Anil’s mind was grappling with not just the price of a car seat cover and the value of a man’s life but the cost of inviting Indira’s wrath which would take days to subside and involve loss of substantial peace of mind.
“Moreover,” Anil persisted, “If you take him to a hospital in your car in this condition, it will definitely become a medico-legal case and you will be harassed by the cops till your dying day.”
“There is a supreme court ruling that no one will be harassed if he brings in an injured person involved in an accident.”
“That is only in theory,” Anil scoffed. “Practically, the cops will start off with blaming us for the accident in the first place.”
“Even if that be so. We are humans too. Some day one of us could be in a similar situation. Would you like that you keep lying on the roadside, bleeding while people went past and ignored you?"
An insistent tapping on Anil’s window interrupted their argument; a woman stood peeping into the car, her head draped in her pallu (saree end) and her tearful face, eloquently telling her story. Anil and Indira instinctively reached for the window buttons to check their windows were rolled up.
“Sahib! He will die here. Please help us. My kids will die of hunger if he is dead. Please help us.” Her tearful, sobbing plea tapered off into a seemingly endless wail at the end. A few of the crowd had followed her to the car and were bunched around the woman, eager to see if her pleading would convince Anil and Indira to transport the injured man in their car.
Anil looked at Indira, unsure of what to do next: drive on and invite Indira’s wrath, or heed the woman’s pleas and save himself hours, maybe days, of marital agony.
The woman, sensing Anil’s indecision, darted to the passenger side of the car and addressed her howling and moaning to Indira, her palms now folding into a namastay, now held together palm to palm in a begging gesture, and now banging her forehead to indicate her ill fortune. “You are also a wife, amma! You can understand my plight. Who will look after me if my husband goes away? I have two children……..please help me. Have pity on me.” While appealing to Indira, the woman had moved her face very close to the window, and place her blood soaked palms on it; her face appeared to be framed by the palms. Indira had edged away from the window and Anil judged from the revulsion on her face that the idea of letting into their car the blood stained man and his grimy wife was giving her second thoughts. He
hoped she would change her mind and they could drive on. He sat in his seat, alternately looking at the road ahead and the growing throng around the car.
Suddenly the rear door of the car was pulled open and Anil was horrified to see two or three persons easing the injured man into the car. Anil was jolted but he could not open the car door which was effectually blocked by the people milling around outside it. He let out a loud “Oooayyy!” which did not deter the ushers from purposefully laying the unconscious man into the rear seat, shoehorning his wife into the seat through the opposite door, and placing the bloody head on his wife’s lap. In a flash, the crowd cleared away from the car and some people hurriedly shut the rear doors as if to prevent Anil and Indira from doing something about evicting the unwelcome passengers. As if on a signal all eyes turned to Anil, rendering a drive to the nearest hospital a fait accompli.
The drive to the hospital, around 10 km away, seemed interminable to Anil and he gave Indira “I told you so” glances in irritation every few minutes. Feeling drained by the time they reached the hospital, he drove into an archway signposted “Casualty” and shouted for help until two orderlies in hospital livery arrived with a gurney, a para medic in tow.
He ejected himself from the car the moment he parked and turned his back towards it, not wanting to view the vestiges of the blood soaked occupant of the rear seat. As no one from the hospital approached them for any information or to give any directions, they waited in the waiting area, uncertain of their next move.
Half an hour later, Anil was getting impatient, especially as Indira had gone unusually quiet. He considered simply driving away; as he turned towards Indira to broach that suggestion, he saw a youth attired in a blue gown walking towards them purposefully. He was still ten steps away when a saree clad, shrieking woman appeared behind him, running with all her might. She overtook him and prostrated herself at Anil’s feet, her bloodstained palms coming to rest
on the toes of his sports shoes. He wrenched his feet away even as she squealed, “You are God! You saved my man’s life. May God bless you and all your coming generations!....” She went on, speaking and sobbing alternately, leaving Anil a bit unnerved by her harangue and the attention it was drawing from the people around. He looked at Indira and in one glance conveyed confluencing emotions: satisfaction at saving a life, remorse at almost not saving it, and gratitude to Indira for making him save it. Mild angst at having to invest in new seat covers for the car would come later but for the moment, his mind pushed the thought into the background.
By Ashvani Sachdev
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