To hell and back!

Whenever we college chums used to sit together and discuss something as intense as- ‘the other world’, mysteries of life, death and incarnations, I always used to assert that I don’t fear death, rather I would welcome it, if it has to come today. “I want moksha”, was something I used to add rather unmindfully as I had always been fascinated with my naïve idea of salvation. Never did I know that being witness to a friend’s stint with what could have been a disaster would be enough to break this ‘self-proclaimed moksha seeker’ myth.

Me and my gang of college girlies had decided to cut on our mundane routines and meet straight after three months since college got over. It goes without saying that a simple lunch at Pizza Hut could never have been enough for the appetites of the crazy bunch that we are. A meeting would have been incomplete without ‘our kind’ of adventure. Everybody agreed that we visit ‘Agarsen Ki Boali’ –a very deserted and unknown structure of some historical era on the outskirts of Cannaught Place. While one of the friends had an inkling about location, she was not sure about the exact way. We walked down Tolstoy Marg from Janpath asking for directions from every roadside vendor and autowallah we passed by. But, the place is so unheard of that nobody really knew. That’s when we bumped into an uncle, who fortunately knew the right way. Despite the sweltering sun, we were all charged up, having found our way to the destination finally.

All four of us were walking down the road in random steps, joking, giggling and teasing each other when suddenly two loud shrieks one after another cut-short my laughter. A fraction of a second later, as I re-gained my senses, my heart still pounding, I realized it was me and a friend walking behind me who had screamed in acute shock. A Blue-line bus had come running down the road from nowhere, in full speed and brushed passed another friend of ours, walking in front of all of us. ‘Brush-past’ is actually an understatement. It was almost as, if the bus had hit her in the speed it was is in……( my hands tremble elaborating this). With what I can recall of that horrible second, I think it was indeed a miracle that my friend was saved. It’s traumatizing for me to even imagine what would have happened, had it not been for a difference of few centimeters. As we all stood still with stopped breaths after the incident a passer-by’s comment “ye to gayi thi” made the situation all the more gruesome.

We continued walking in silence to where we were headed for. That’s when, to break the uncanny silence, my friend who just had an encounter with life and death asked in her usual humorous, cheeky self- “agar kuch ho jaata to tum kya karte, mujhe auto mein hospital leke jaate ya fir uski zarurat he nahi padti?” I stared at her for a moment before I said shut- up. I looked into her eyes and wondered because honestly, I did not have an answer. One moment of truth, of reality, of life and death was enough to shatter all my- “I don’t fear death” bravados.