I had a strange day.. Finished my last board exam and headed home by an auto-rickshaw.. On the way, a 7-8 year old child was walking on the road with his mother and a friend of hers.. He was listening to music on a mobile phone and ran blindly across the road.. My auto-rickshaw collided with the child who suffered multiple injuries and lay on the street, unconscious.. A mob gathered around us and had it not been for me and the auto-wallah rushing him to the hospital (the accident took place right in front of the Civil Hospital in Wardha), the auto-wallah would surely have been beaten brutally and his auto burnt.. We managed to get him to a bed of the hospital where he lay helplessly, now awake and crying.. It was clear that he had suffered a break in his knee joint (It looked limp).. A doctor came around 3-4 minutes later.. She looked at the kid and advised his mother to get him admitted.. Shockingly, the mother said that she couldn’t as she was in somewhat of a hurry.. The doctor then went on to stress the fact that the kid’s knee was fractured and he couldn’t possibly walk in that state.. The mother reluctantly agreed to have him admitted after being insisted to do so by almost everyone present.. There was a police inspector there taking a statement from another accident victim.. He advised the auto-wallah and the mother to not say that it was a road accident, as it would involve some police paperwork, which he seemed to want to avoid.. All I did was try and console the kid that it was going to be okay.. When I felt that I could do no more, I paid the driver and went home in another auto-rickshaw..
Life is strange sometimes..
A Strange Road Accident
Abhinav Shukla 