The Accident

Travelling was my pure and perfect love until an accident broke my pretty little nose. I was crazy even when it came to bus rides. I always did find a dreaming side to it that, being a passionate dreamer, I never had let any of those moments slip from my hands. But as love experts say, every love has a heart-breaking phase. In my case, it arrived assuming the form of a frightful accident.

  I have seen the edges of death many a time and luckily, I don’t remember them all. Some of them are stories of my childhood, I heard from my mother. Reflecting upon them, it seems that the YamRaj in pity, had changed his mind at the last moments to save me from those blazing ropes despite being continuously asked to take me with him.

When I was born, I did refuse to cry. It was after a long time of anxious treatments that I cried at last, but with tiny drops of salty tears rolling down my cheeks…certainly not a usual sight. I was a baby crawling on my knees when the next two incidents paved their thorny ways to put an end to my careless wanderings. Since my house literally touched the road, day after day I might have grown curious about the endless road and those big toys running with humans, whose smaller versions I played with. One day I decided to cross the road, most probably to have a better look of those big toys and to explore the other fascinating side of the rough road. I don’t remember how, of course I can’t, but according to the stories I heard about myself among the fairy tales and Panchatantra stories my mother did tell me, I somehow had managed to cross the road. My mother at last had found me at the other side of the road in a stranger’s hand who had rescued me from that chaos. It was during this same crawling period that once my father saved me from falling down the stairs.

  The fourth incident was too impatient to laugh at me that it took a flight to my school and ruined my day to remember for the rest of my life. I was playing a game and had to hide a chalk piece where no one would find it. I found no other place than my pretty little nose, to hide it. I was a kid then and kids are gracefully stupid. Since this stupidity of mine was staged during our last period, we all did forget the game when the final bell rang, overwhelmed by the freedom to run out of our classes creating a mess. Even I whose nose was jammed by the chalk piece didn’t remember the game until a terrible pain ruined my ears and my peace of mind. I was immediately taken to a nearby hospital and luckily was saved.

  The last accident happened very recently, and since I remember every second of it, I’ll give you a detailed account on how an accident broke my love towards rides. Two years back, I encountered a frightful attempt devised again, as it seems, to let me know that I am not my master. I was, as always seated at the window seat, my mother beside me, and was dreaming about my future when the bus took a turn with an unusual speed. Lost in a world of elegant life-like dreams, I hardly noticed the turn and speed that, the hit took me by surprise and gave me a tremendous shock. I woke up frightfully when a tremor passed through my body and found myself thrown forward with my seat that had followed my track. It took me some time to realise what was happening. I found myself jammed between the two seats like a vegetable between two big breads but certainly it wasn’t that funny.

When I realised what just happened, I started to search for my mother skeptically. I tried to turn around, I tried to push the seats and free myself but I was growing weaker… I tried to call out to her but my voice refused to leave its home. I heard nothing except the throbbing in my head. I thought I was losing myself when I finally heard my mother calling out for help. Someone helped me to get out of the bus and as soon as I landed on my foot, I anxiously looked at my mother. She was alright except a few scratches on her arm that looked like a naughty cat’s painting. It was for me that she had called out for help. She looked at my face and soon began to panic. She cried out to people to take me to some hospital. It was then that I realised how badly my nose was bleeding. My dress was blood-soaked and my nose, disfigured.

The police rescue force soon arrived and took us all to a nearby hospital. At the hospital, my pretty little nose was examined and I was carried in a wheelchair for scanning purposes, after my bleeding stopped. I also met there a news reporter while waiting for my results, who asked me about the accident despite my evident reluctance, for I was too tired to speak continuously. His report finally left my friends and relatives tensed. When at last, the results of my CT Scan came, they told me that I was alright. I looked at my mother and after so many hours, she smiled, though weakly.

  Interestingly, now when I sat to reform my story into words, seeing my reflection on the laptop screen before it power started, I involuntarily sat back some time reflecting upon my deformed nose. I Hope it gets normal after another accident.