Accidents Happen

Aruna smiled as she looked at her mobile screen. So many comments on her new facebook profile picture. Though she wondered why this time there weren’t that many likes.

Not that it matters really.

She looked out of the bus window, as it drove down the Mumbai-Pune expressway. She needed to reach Pune in the next two hours for the meeting. And everything was going just as per schedule. 

Until now.

Because now a silver Honda had just overtaken the bus. The man driving the Honda was a good man with a few bad habits. One among them, was driving while being quite thoroughly intoxicated.

And so when the Honda swerved uncontrollably to its left and then to its right and then flipped over in the middle of the road, the bus driver Keshav was understandably pissed. With an experience of five years of driving this route, Keshav hit the brakes real hard and the bus halted with a soft thud against the Honda.

Behind the bus another fifteen cars, three trucks and six buses came to a halt. 

In the bus, Aruna was feeling nervous. As a HR manager in Qualdo, a pharmaceutical company, you don’t get into bus accidents every day. 

Slowly the minutes turned to an hour. And Aruna’s initial shock over having survived an accident, gradually turned to impatience.

I need to reach this meeting. Six months of hard work and now this!

The bus driver announced that the bus had suffered some damage while braking and a replacement vehicle would be arranged in sometime. 

Another forty minutes dragged by and Keshav again assured the passengers that another bus would definitely be coming in ‘some time’. Aruna’s boss was not happy with ‘some time’.  There were very few things that he was ever happy about. Aruna assured him that she would definitely reach the meeting.

Aruna got out of the bus and started to look around for a taxi. There were none. And after waiting for fifteen minutes, there were still none. From the bus driver she learnt that there was a taxi stand some one kilometer ahead.

With an extreme urgency of purpose, Aruna started to walk down the road. 

During all this time she had managed to communicate her plight on facebook, twitter, whatsapp and a few other social media portals. Though she didn’t get any help, she was getting a whole lot of sympathy.

And it was at this moment, as she had covered about half a kilometer that it started raining. Slowly at first, but then suddenly pouring very heavily.

Aruna was completely drenched. And worried that the water would get into the purse, containing her mobile.

Finally she reached the taxi stand.

Looking at her, a kind soul would have seen a poor girl in dire need. But the taxi drivers saw an opportunity to earn an extra buck. 

 

Aruna stared incredibly at the taxi driver.

“Six thousand? But Uncle, Pune is only about an hour away!!”

The taxi driver felt something in his heart. Guilt, shame and the voice of his conscience. Then he realized that Aruna had just called him an uncle.

He raised the rate to seven thousand.

As Aruna argued with the driver, a black Volvo bus passed by. And Aruna realized, that she would have been in that bus, if she had not decided to walk to the  taxi stand.

Suddenly Aruna realized that water was seeping out of her purse. Apparently it was not as water proof as the salesman made her believe.With tears in her eyes, she saw that her five month old phone was completely soaked in water.

She was going to miss the meeting she had worked on for six months. The one opportunity she had to prove herself to the board of directors. And now she had also lost her phone.

Aruna stood crying in the rain, wondering why the hell was God being so cruel to her.

A tow truck passed her dragging the silver Honda behind. She looked angrily at it.In the back seat of the Honda was the man who had been driving it. With growing astonishment Aruna recognized Avinash Upadhyay, the son of the CEO of Qualdo Pharmaceuticals.

Aruna ran after the tow truck, screaming, “MR.UPADHYAY!! I’M AN EMPLOYEE OF QUALDO! PLEASE STOP!!!”

The tow truck stopped. A very hung over looking Avinash stared with a dazed expression. Was he imagining this? Aruna assured him that he wasn’t.

Over the next hour that it took to get to the Qualdo office in Pune, Aruna assured him about keeping this matter private. Avinash was quite grateful. As was his father.

Aruna didn’t make it to the meeting but she managed to secure an appointment with the CEO for the next day. Aruna’s boss couldn’t understand what was happening. But he did understand that somehow he was not in trouble with the management. So he was happy.

Aruna stood in the office lobby with a hot cup of coffee, trying to make sense of everything that had happened. Suddenly she realized that she had not checked her phone for any messages. 

In her slightly wet purse she found her now non operational phone.

That night the Qualdo office cleaner Gopal, considered himself lucky to have found a smart phone in the dust bin. Gopal thought that he could probably get some cash for it. Even though the phone didn’t seem to be working.

Also that very night, Aruna got into a train heading back to Mumbai.

I am done with buses!! Well...at least for a while I guess…

Lying comfortably in the AC train compartment, Aruna didn’t think of how many likes her facebook profile picture would have got by now. She didn’t think of how many messages had been sent to her on whatsapp. Or what would now be trending on twitter.

She just slept. Peacefully.