A trip of our lives..

Iam back from a month long vacation to India and UK। Your next question would be, how was it?
How was it?..Hmm..I don't know! Cannot come to a conclusion!! It was Terrible, Terrifying, Frightening but it was also Good, Exciting and a Pleasant one too. You must be thinking - what happened to me and why am I talking all yak..yak.. Here is what happened in this trip along the time lines.

April 24th - We reached India.

April 26th- morning I went to my parents’ house. It was such a nice feeling to see that place after 2 years. I had a nice lunch with my parents and relatives. Evening we started for 'Sannathi', my in-laws' family deity temple place. That place is in remote Karnataka. We started around 6PM. We hired a Toyota Qualis.

(Lesson 1: Never travel at night in India. Your driver and all the other drivers will be dozing off while driving)

(Lesson 2: Qualis is not a vehicle for Indian roads. It has too much power and a driver cannot control the vehicle unless he is in a good shape and can control speed and mind.)

My parents, PILs, sis-in-law and two of us (GB and I) started for the temple. The driver was going around 100 KMPH and wouldn't listen to my dad who tried to slow him down. My dad would ask him time to time, if he is ok and if he wants anything to drink. In spite of stopping at 2 places for tea, the driver would say he wouldn't drink tea and this driving was normal to him etc.. Everyone there felt something very bad is going to happen. The mood was set already and it was showing. Actually my mom and my sisters along with some others had dreams about this accident the week before. But no one said anything.

(Lesson 3: If your intuition says some thing is not right, just stand up and STOP the f'ing thing).

It was as if I knew already, 2 AM in a remote place, where you can see no single light from any home or any city.. in darkness... in front of our eyes, the yellow light of the car turned away from the road, hit the wall of the culvert (This helped reduce the speed of the impact) and jumped into the ditch 30 ft under the culvert. THUD..THUD...THUD..three loud noises and then everything was calm for few seconds..or may be more............!

I heard my dad kicking the back door of the vehicle from inside. He kicked three times and luckily the door opened. Next my mom limped out. My mom and dad were frantically shouting my name. "Mommy, daddy..I am OK, But I am struck. Something is cold all over, is it blood?", I shouted back. My dad tried to pull me from all the broken seats of Qualis which were over me. "No..no..don't pull. My Back hurts badly,” I shrieked in pain. They pulled me out. I can stand up, but what is it ..all wet on my back? Is it blood? They found a flashlight and saw on my face. My mom couldn't bear see me. I was all bloody on my face. Next I confirmed "Dad, did anything happened to you, Mom are you OK?". I had a cut somewhere on my face, that is why all this blood. BUT..BUT..where is GB? "GB..GB”..I called out tensely. What if he doesn't answer? What if?

Then came his voice.."Amma..Appa.." (Mom..Dad..). Oh My God..he is alright!! But he has blood all over him. "GB..wait, where did you get hurt?" ..I was trying to hold him, but he was unstoppable. My Dad and GB pulled out my father-in-law from under the vehicle. My FIL was real lucky – The vehicle leaned on 2 ft rock and in the gap between the vehicle and the ground was his head. The rock stopped the vehicle from crushing his head. Next they pulled out my mother-in-law. Hers was a gruesome sight. She has multiple cuts on forehead and her blood wouldn't clot that easily. Next, GB was shouting "Jyo..Jyo". His sister!! There was no sound. Is she OK? They pulled her feeble body out- my dad literally lifted her with his hands and brought her to the higher ground. Then she began to cry slowly. She cannot move her head.

The three thuds earlier directly impacted my mom. Her head was all swollen and her leg was 3 times the usual size. The wetness on my back was only the water in the cool-keg that emptied all over me. We shouted for help. There was no one. A few lorries stopped. But no one was comes close. They all stood there..saying "Looks like some people died. Look at all the blood". And some came forward to 'help us' with the luggage. We told them not to come close and that we can manage our own luggage. My mom - with her swollen leg gathered the entire luggage while my dad stabilized everyone.

GB and I climbed up the 30 ft to the road, through the broken glass and big thorny bushes. We tried stopping few lorries, but no one stopped. We gave our jewelry; watches etc tied in a handkerchief to my dad and got into a lorry. (Never thought that being NRIs and living thousands of miles away from India, we would come all this far middle of nowhere to get into a road accident and would have to get into lorries etc which we never even imagining travelling in, even living in India!!)

We went to the nearest big city, Gulbarga! We hired couple of autos and came back to the site and put all our beloved relatives along with the luggage and drove back to Gulbarga hospital. Usually people see the core mal-functioning of doctors and officials in India only in the movies, but we saw it practically. The hospital personnel said that it is a MLC (Medico-Legal case - Police case). There was only one doctor in that government hospital. If you stand still for a minute in Gulbarga, you will be eaten alive by the mosquitoes. There was not even single bathroom or drinking water tap in that hospital.

Well..anyway..long story short, we took first aid for our cuts, took injections and tried stabilizing those who were in severe pain. While my mom sat with the luggage being eaten by mosquitoes, I limped all over the hospital with thorns in my legs, for water.

My dad and GB went back to the site next morning. In the early morning light, they found the car totally destroyed. They also found my sis-in-law’s purse and camera thrown 200 ft away from the accident site. We could imagine, how things must have flown out when the vehicle was jumping like James bond's car. We were fortunate that there was no water in the ditch, other wise we would have drowned, trapped in the vehicle and died. And also there was no head-on collision with any other vehicle. That was Lucky! It was also our luck that the vehicle has just flipped to the side. If it had rolled couple of times, at least some of us would have ended up dead with broken necks. The other good thing was that the vehicle jumped onto this sharp thorny but cushiony bushes. That was painful but the bushes helped lessen the impact. The driver ran away. He didn't get a single scratch while all the others had Blood EVERYWHERE!

In the morning, the police came and were asking me “ ..how many bodies were there?” I said “there are no bodies, every one is alive”. Then he said “ ..then you are lucky. Because there were 2 more accidents before you on the same road and all involved died in both accidents”. Ours was the last accident for the day and we were the only ones who were alive. Sharp shiver runs down me..whenever I remember that.

April 27th - Since we were just 3 hours from our destination, my husband and I decided that we both will go to the temple and come back for everyone's satisfaction. So we rented a car and started for the temple. GB was like the movie actor 'Chiru' in the movie 'Kaidhi' with a huge band aid around his head and the blood on his face. (His forehead was cut deep) and I had a cut on my Eyebrow. We went to the temple, thanked God for saving us and went back to Hyderabad by the Hussainsagar express. Meanwhile my parents hired a Tata Sumo (We were scared to travel in a hired vehicle again) and carefully brought everyone to NIMS, Hyd.

April 28th-My father-in-law had a broken hand, my mom-in-law had sutures on face, GB had a broken shoulder and a deep cut on fore head, your's truly had a real cosmetic cut on the eye brow and few broken ribs, my mom has internal leg injuries and my dad has deeply scrapped skin. The major one was my sis-in-law's cervical bone breakage, which needed a minor surgery in Apollo.

So..that was the highlight of the trip. It was life changing, unfortunate-but still fortunate that we are alive incident. This is our life # 2.

The next one week, we were just shuttling around hospitals. But later, we had a very nice time going to Warangal, Thirupati, Guntur etc. Attending my best friend, Pavan's wedding, meeting one of my other BFFs - Vijju, Durga (Vijay's Fiancee) and Vasudha (Pavan's wife). I visited Vasavi (My Engineering College). It felt good. Then I went around 108 pradakshinas (going around the temple while meditating on God) in Chilkoor. Thank God for giving us the second opportunity to live life in a better way.

May 18th - My B-Day!! All my Best friends (Pavvi, Vijju, Pavan and Sharath) called. Had a good party at my house. I left India that night.

May 19th - Me, GB and Mamatha (my youngest sis) went to London. We had good time with my other sister, Saritha and her hubby, Mahesh. London was cold but cool. We all had a great time. We were back to US on May 23rd.