Awesome Blossoms: Horn OK Please (19 page)

Alex had always known that his mother wasn’t going to see him again but he couldn’t risk his own life by talking about it with his father or his representative, Maria. He knew that news travelled about him to his father, every day.

He didn’t understand how his life would change after the revelation. He had almost no memories of his mother and no hope whatsoever of seeing her but this had changed everything, yet he didn’t know how. He just knew it was the saddest moment of his life.

The worst was yet to come.

Maria had been informed by Alex’s father over the phone call that he wasn’t going to return back home as he had grown tired of taming a young boy he didn’t feel connected to. Maria tried to reason him out but her query was completely ignored and
he went on to explain that he would be starting afresh in some corner of a distant town and that he would be untraceable after that night. Maria was supposed to break this to the little kid and leave him to the foster home and sell the house for whatever price that she could and use the money to help the child or herself.

The turmoil in her heart was horrendous and she didn’t want young Alex to be so scarred that he would be unable to look for happiness in his life after this incident. In a moment of unexplained courage and unquestionable fear about the young boy’s life if he were left to rot in an orphanage, she decided to take a stand.

She decided to stand for him.

“What is it, Maria?” Alex was continuously prodding, now that he knew something was wrong.

Maria leaned into him, held his chin up and wiped off the little pearls of water that were already flowing from his eyes and
whispered “It is okay, Alex. Everything is alright.”

That little moment of reassurance calmed him down as he felt the touch of the fountain of love that had always been so elusive to him. He encountered the warmth of a mother’s heart and aggression of her protectiveness to ensure her child is taken care of well.

The embrace said all that Maria needed to know.

At 10 AM, the red bus appeared on the horizon as it raced up the high road of the town reaching towards the bus stop from where it would depart towards Razio, a city in the northern part of the country. Maria held the luggage in one hand and the
hand tightly clenched Alex’s fingers. He was already getting anxious to escape to another city where he would be allowed to watch Television, have ice cream and celebrate happiness as much as he wished to. Maria had told him that his father had died in an encounter, the other night and that she would be his mother. Alex was happier about getting a mother in her than losing his only parent. Somewhere, he did grow up into an adult who could think of his own good.

Their escape turned out to be a lesson for Alex to not to stay at a place that isn’t pleasing for long and Maria found a family she had always craved for. Razio, the city of hills as it was called, had a low temperature with minimal sunshine during the year but pleasant weather all around. Alex didn’t complain. His sunshine was finally with him and this time, for a little longer than forever.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

By Shanti Arunkumar

***

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

- Franklin D Roosevelt

Twist of Fate

I
sha cruised at 120 kmph. She had to reach the station to catch the metro train in the next fifteen minutes, or she would be late for her first-ever interview. It was a miracle that she had made it to the list of the shortlisted candidates in spite of the fact that her grades were not so good in the last semester of her college. There were others with impressive results and she was sure they would get the interview call. It was a giant of a company in Mumbai, with branch offices at Pune and Chennai, but, Isha wished for Mumbai, the city where she had grown up, the metro that had nurtured her spirit. The traffic policeman whistled as he tried to caution her for the breakneck speed. She just didn't have time for good, old road rules. Today was her day of road-rage.

Out of nowhere, speeding next to her was a beautiful white Mercedes Benz, cruising along, with tinted windows. She wondered
which nameless person was well-ensconced inside the comfortable confines of the beautiful voiture. Never mind, she had her own pressing problems looming all too large in her mind.

She pressed the accelerator harder just before the signal
turned red. She had no time to waste! Lost again in her ruminations and her plans for the day, dictated by her extreme nervousness, she moved ahead automatically. Suddenly she heard it....the noise was just too loud and the shock hit her hard. A lot of clangs, screeches and demonic thuds…and blood -curdling screams of passers-by. That stately looking Mercedes Benz had had a head-on collision with a huge tanker carrying some inflammable liquid. It was a wreck, a twisted ugly mass of metal, with smoke slowly easing its way from what appeared to be the engine. Oh no...!That was the last thing she wanted to encounter that morning. There were other cars that zipped by unconcerned, but Isha wasn’t heartless. She parked her car near the pavement and ran towards the once-upon-a-time Benz. The driver leaned over the wheel, his head appeared limp and so was the passenger next to him, bleeding profusely. There were cars and the crowd slowly gained momentum in terms of curiosity, but no one was spontaneous enough to attend to the injured and bleeding people.

Isha could not single- handedly haul them out of the car. She was too weak for that. She caught the eye of another man, who came forward, to ease the wounded men out of the mangled remains of the once-beautiful and expensive car. Hauling took what seemed an eternity. Not a soul offered to assist Isha, apart from the man who was helping her. All thoughts about her impending interview had evaded her mind. She couldn't think. She was trembling with a fear that was unknown to her before, at the gory sight of the blood and two people hurt, looking almost  lifeless.

The Palm Beach Road was a lot like The Queen's Necklace. It was a landmark arterial road of the city, only...the cars that ran across its stretch did not like to pay heed to traffic rules. They liked to zip at top gear arrogantly with blaring music, almost resembling metallic maniacs on this dangerous road. This road had been featured in all renowned dailies, its claim to fame being the number of accidents and deaths related to it, even surpassing any other busy roads in the busy city of Mumbai.

Isha's immediate concern was to take the bleeding people to the trauma care hospital named Amity, which was conveniently located off the Palm Beach Road. Irony was, before the hospital had sprung
up in all its size and splendor, it had seemed like not many accidents had actually taken place, whereas, within a few months of its existence, its looming presence seemed to sweep off the living from the famously infamous road, unto itself. She and the stranger gently carried the men and placed them in her car, setting off towards the hospital. Once there, they informed the hospital staff, who helped carry the men inside, accomplished that they were, in such critical care.

She was frantic, not knowing what she could do next. She pulled out the wallet of the other injured man. Attired in an expensive suit, obviously on his way to a
n important meeting somewhere, he looked every bit the prosperous man that his clothes and his vehicle portrayed. He must be in his early thirties, she thought. She looked into his wallet. There were cards of many banks. She pulled out a few. They had the name Nikhil Vohra inscribed on them. She tried to take out his mobile phone, but realized to her dismay that it was locked. She couldn’t do anything about that! Flipping through his wallet, she found visiting cards that belonged to a number of people.

The doctor had come in by now and had informed her that she had had extreme presence of mind to not to linger on aimlessly at the accident site, thereby placing these lives at peril and that they had come in at just the right time. Some immediate tests were required to be performed on him, which could save his life. Apparently, his head had hit the side of the dashboard because of the rather violent impact of the collision and he had become unconscious after suffering a concussion. This had to be attended to immediately, to rule out the presence of a hemorrhage in the head. Isha was clueless, mentally almost paralyzed. She stared at the doctor in an incomprehensible manner. He shoved a few papers at her and commanded, "Madam, sign please." "Why should I sign? I don't know him, Doctor!" She screamed. "It's just a formality madam", he said, handing over a pen to her.

Isha desperately skimmed through the contents of the printed form and hastily scribbled a shaky signature. She opened Nikhil Vohra's wallet and pulled out a few visiting cards. One card caught her attention- It read Meena Vohra and it had a few numbers inscribed on it. With trembling fingers she punched in the first number. It was eight in the morning- of course she knew how precious time was. Her focused priority was her interview which had taken a back - seat after the train of terrible incidents that had occurred within a flash of a second.

The incidents of the morning were beyond her immediate control. Her parents would be under the impression that she would be at the interview venue. What was she going to tell them? Would she ever get another interview call for the same position from the same company if she told them of the contretemps of the morning? Would they accord any credibility to what she would narrate? So many questions plagued her, so many fears assailed her. What if she never got
a call for any position in any organization? What if she wasn't good enough? She was nervous and full of anguish, she did not know how to overcome this. It seemed to stifle her.

She heard a strong female voice at the other end of the phone. She guessed it to be his wife, its veracity confirmed by the authoritative c
onfidence that the voice exuded; at least she sensed it. She found herself croaking into the receiver. "Mrs. Meena Vohra?"

"Yes, speaking. Who is this?"

"Ma'am, I am calling from Amity Hospital on Palm Beach Road, Mumbai. My name is Isha Varma and I would like to know if you are Mr. Nikhil's wife."

"Yes, I am Nikhil's wife. What is the matter? Why're you calling from a hospital?"

"Ma'am,  I was driving on the Palm Beach Road, when your...er.... your husband met with an accident, a few minutes ago. I had him admitted into The Amity Hospital just now. Could you please come down to the hospital? It is located after Vashi, towards Panvel".

There seemed to be no sound from the other end, for what seemed like a thousand seconds. Th
en there was a sudden sob, followed by a weak, "How is his condition? Please tell me...."

Isha's heart went out to the lady. She could understand exactly what she must be going through. She responded, "I just brought him to the hospital ma'am. He is unconscious".

"Madam...! What is your blood group?" cut short her conversation abruptly.

"Why Doctor?
It is O positive". The attending nurse beckoned to her into another room, where there were two other doctors, looking very worried. "Both of them have lost a lot of blood. Our blood banks are almost exhausted. We don't have much in our reserves. You have to help these men" , said one of them. Isha had donated blood before, therefore she was only too eager to help. She was led into another room. After an hour of being confined to the table and the needle, Isha slowly got down feeling a little dizzy and went to the doctor to enquire what was to happen next. The person who needed surgery, Nikhil Vohra, was already being readied for it.

Rushing towards her and the attending nurses was a pretty, young woman, looking distraught. She walked towards Isha and said, "I am Meena. I cannot thank you enough for sacrificing your precious time and your work this morning. If not for you and the efforts you have taken, putting yourself at risk, I don't know what fate would have befallen my beloved husband and Anil, our driver. Nikhil was travelling to conduct a series of important meetings and interviews this morning". Isha took in her words and then responded "Well, I was myself driving at an insane speed ma'am, trying to make it for my own very first interview, but of course, nothing had prepared me for what I witnessed this morning. I thought it was only humane, doing what I did, although I am upset that I had to forgo what I was going for. I don't even know if I will get another chance".

Meena Vohra enquired consolingly, "Which company had called you for the interview?" With a lot of sadness Isha remarked, "Centuras Finance and Investments, ma'am". Again a long silence followed Isha's words. "Well, it looks like destiny likes to play a few cards in the most unexpected manner possible! My husband, apart from his very important meetings, had accommodated two interviews too. He is the MD of Centuras! Initially, the interviews were to be under the care of another person, but due to an inadvertent emergency that showed its ugly head late last night, this change took place. Incidentally, what have you studied Isha?" 

"I just got through my CA a few months ago and have been looking for suitable employment. Centuras was the only financial outfit that called me for an interview. I was really excited, this being my first....so much of suspense whether I would be selected or not ma'am. Now, I have not been in a position to attend the interview and I have no idea about the kind of reaction I would be welcomed with, when I reach home. You know how pressurizing parents can get, their over- concern born out of apprehension and desperation, but never-the-less stifling us."

It was ten in the morning; two hours had elapsed by with formalities that preceded a surgery as well as the other developments. Suddenly Isha realized that she was hungry and that she needed to call home to inform her parents of what had transpired that morning. Walking towards the canteen, she decided she would address her hunger first and speak to her parents later. That would take a considerable stretch of time, convincing them and justifying what she had done. She realized she didn't have any time for the rigors of the phone call.

"Isha, can I join you? I am nervous, I cannot sit in peace until I know Nikhil is fine", said Meena. "We were supposed to leave for Colombo for our third wedding anniversary celebrations day -after- tomorrow, but Providence obviously had something else in mind. I hope he is out of danger".  They had breakfast followed by coffee to keep their spirits buoyant after what they had each gone through.

Ambling along in the direction of the operation theatre, they were suddenly brought back to ground reality by the voices of the doctor and the attending nurses. The doctor's face betrayed his feelings, even before he could even convert his thoughts into comprehensible words. Both Meena and Isha ran towards him with an excitement that cannot be understood by just anyone, save one who is closely associated with someone waiting to show some semblance of life after nearly staring at death at close quarters. The doctor's words seemed like magic. They were assured that Nikhil was out of danger, although he had escaped from the jaws of death by a fraction of a few minutes, thanks to the quick-mindedness of Isha, who could have sped by, without even glancing at the badly bashed-up car, now best fit for the junkyard. Reality struck hard at Isha, who could not help but wonder how, life rendered deathblows in a fraction of a second to the ones who expected them at the least. Life could change into death in fleeting moments and vice versa. Had it not been for Isha that fated morning, Nikhil would have tuned into a corpse, well on its way to the cremation ground. Maybe, Isha would have reported for the interview, only to realize that the person in charge of the interview had not arrived due to an unfortunate accident and she may have had to return home after an uneventful day, waiting forever apprehensively for the announcement of the new interview date! 

Meena now held her hand instinctively. Strange, sometimes we are driven to situations in our lives where we start experiencing oneness with people we hardly know, but who are unified by a particularly focused sentiment. The doctor announced with a relief that all people of the medical fraternity would express a consensus with, instantaneously- the fear of having used incorrect procedure to revive a patient would gnaw at any medical practitioner until the results start showing. Meena ran into the ICU to see her husband. He appeared weak, but yes, he was smiling weakly at her. Thank goodness! Recognition and recollection was not a problem, Meena thought to herself. "I only recall driving with Anil on the dreaded Palm Beach Road darling....after that I recall a deafening noise...and
then I find myself on a hospital bed. Of course, Dr. Amit was kind enough to brief me with all the details. If not for that young girl Isha, perhaps Anil and I would have been the new entrants to the mortuary!!"

He was overcome by fatigue. He looked at her with a wan expression. Dr. Amit walked into the room along with Isha and announced,"Mr. Vohra, if you want to thank someone, it has to be this smart, intelligent young lady, Isha. Despite being busy this morning, she did not hesitate to put her interests behind and concentrate on doing a good humanitarian service."