That one time I almost died...

I have always taken travelling in a bus for granted – Hop in, curl up under the smelly blanket, and hope that the speed bumps on the road do not break your back. Until, I woke up dangling off a 20 ft elevated highway at 3 AM in the morning.

My dad, mom and I were on a temple trip to a nearby village in Tamil Nadu.  The sole intention of the trip was to bribe Lord Shiva enough and accelerate the process of finding a unicorn that wanted to marry me (being 26 and having dramatic ‘will we ever see grandkids’ type of parents is not easy, I tell you)

So, half the journey went without a hitch; until at about 2.30 AM in the wee hours of the morning, when the driver stopped the bus for the very crudely put ‘ladies toilet’ break. As the driver shook us awake and demanded that all the women go for their ‘onnu’ now or never, all of us groggily trooped out. The thinly veiled threat of not stopping for even ‘urgent’ matters, actually worked.

After settling back into the smelly blankets, the bus had barely moved for ten minutes, when it started doing a weird bumpy dance.  Like a bewildered rocking chair that went sideways instead of to and fro. This continued with increased intensity and frequency, until we heard the chilling sound of a window shatter and the bus screeched to a resounding halt.

You never realize how scary an accident can be, until you are in one.  You can see the world whirl outside, hear frantic horns, cries of surprise and shock, and feel every single bone of your body shake in fear.  Our bus, to avoid a collision with a lorry that had abruptly braked in the middle of the freaking highway, suddenly swerved and almost fell off a 20 ft elevation.

What actually happened

This left the driver, conductor, my dad, mom and I, almost dangling off the highway in the middle of the night.  As the tyres had sunk into the mud, the doors of the bus refused to open.  This is when the whole ‘we are OMFGodly trapped inside a bus that could blow up any minute’ tension started to grow. The conductor sensing an alarm (or probably just looking at my pale, resigned to death, face) broke open an emergency exit window at the back. All of us, in a Spidermanisque moment, jumped out of the window one by one.

Then, the wait began. Like some sort of displaced refugees, we stood with our baggage on the side of the highway, under the pouring rain for 40 whole minutes. There was real fear of other speeding vehicles splattering our brains, but somehow we survived. I just stood there, shaking like a leaf, amidst the heavy rains, the gloomy police patrol vans, and the reckless lorry driver (who had by then escaped) being called ‘eruma maadu’.

Our rescue bus finally arrived with flashy lights and a driver who had the smug ‘I think I just saved a bunch of idiots by the road’ look.  My mother, obviously traumatized, remarked that this was all ‘andha Shivan oda’ miracle.

Drenched, scared-shit, and stunned, I could only think – if this really was the Lord’s doing, then our Gods must be crazy!