IRONY

Rushing vehicles- bikes, cars, auto-rickshaws and buses. Flying pollutants, if taken as a whole, will be enough to cause irked red eyes, vigorous coughs and ultimately damaged lungs. Traffic police blowing whistles on those unruly luxurious cars, who didn't give a damn to the traffic signals, which always went plain amongst the mixture of blatant horns of several other vehicles on the roads. This was the exact scenario of Lala Lajpat road, this was common. 

On the footpath of the road I was, loitering, unoccupied with any thought and empty a heart, taking short steps, five in a minute making my journey to home deliberately very slow. Those passing vehicles didn't catch my attention until there was a clash between the two speeding bikes from opposite directions.

That clash was enough to slow down the traffic and gather few people around the spot similar to the ants surrounding a cube of sugar. Within few seconds I was amongst the few people, an ant. I was witnessing an accident, first in my life-time, live.

On the ground was a man, lying down, filled with bruises and tiny drops of blood covering his whole body, may be some broken bones too, I was not sure of it. The other person had already fled, being the one at fault. The victim on the ground was traumatized, not a whisper escaped his lips and neither did groans of pain. He had suffered an injurious accident yet he was still, still trying to figure out what actually had happened, open-mouthed. He was numb, resembling a living statue.

We were still standing, encircled around the victim, observing him as if a film shooting of a tragic scene going on, witnessing with awe. This was no shooting, though it was a tragic scene. Feeling a resurgence of humanity within, I took an initiative to help the person by lifting his bike pressing against his legs nearly crushing it to the point till it hurt. People were still looking at the tragic scene with awe. The victim now was lying on the ground, flickering his eyelids, rolling his eyeballs to the extreme corners of his eyes. He was unstable in mind, may be he did break some of his bones. I tried to lift his body, he needed to be hospitalized, he was heavier. I was struggling with his body, not able to lift it completely, the victim had already lost control of his senses letting himself loose on to my hands. Without helping me, people were still looking at the tragic scene with awe.

“Will anybody help me out please?” I shouted.

I kept staring at the people, if anyone would come and help. But people were still looking at the tragic scene with awe. Finally, after one and a half minute, one and a half minute in an accident spot does matter, a person came out of the crowd and helped me lift the victim. I mounted on his bike with the victim behind tying him to me and straight away rode to the nearby nursing home. My shirt was now red. The doctor admitted the person in the ward and I completed the formalities giving a call to his family with his half-wrecked phone. And all these time the people seated in the corridor were continuously giving me gruesome looks. I didn't care, my work there was over. As I was leaving, I  heard a line of the random conversation.

“Looks like the kid has hit the person with his bike, or else who in this self-centered world has free time to drop a person to the hospital.”

Written by :- Ravi Raj