Tuesday, January 27, 2009

heavier by a plate and 8 screws

Its been exactly a month and 3 weeks since that fateful day. I have imagined myself going through it again and again, and the part that I hate the most is the one in which I was trapped under my bike and being dragged on the tarmac by the vehicle for more than a meter (The accident happened when I was commuting to office. I suffered a broken bone in my left leg and some ligament damage at the ankle. The bone needed to be operated and my leg stayed in the cast for 6 weeks). And just for the record I had nothing personal against any motorist including this dude...
For once in his lifetime, if a motorist could only stop and think about how life has been for most of the cyclists out there, he would (and probably should) give a big salute to everyone. For his contributions to the society, a cyclist is very modest in his needs. All he requires is a 1ft x 6ft piece of road on the leftmost edge, for which he has to put up a brave front against threatening vehicles many times the size of his bike and not to mention the ridicule and the foul-mouthing. He bears all the insult and moves on believing that one day the world will not look down upon him anymore. His hopes of finding a fairer world might be a dream but it is a good thing that he hopes, because this hope is the only thing that will get him back to his bicycle everyday. And as long as he keeps doing that, there is One Less Car or One Less Motorbike on the road :)

My terrible experience came at a cost (or should I say "It cost me a lot of things...things that were important"), and I was surprised at myself for not never having cursed that gentleman. That is so unlike the temperamental and ever defensive ME. I wondered what had changed me in these years? And I couldn't think of any answer other than my obsessive hobby of the two wheels. Cycling , I realized, has taught me to be more practical and more balanced towards a situation , because we have been treated so much more worse than others. I realized that if not for that gentleman I would not have had a chance to experience the hospitality of Apollo Hospitals and the feeling of spending the new years eve with my family after 3 long years. If not for him I would never have felt my pseudo pain-thresholds, that I broke many a times and the constant reassurances of my buddies on the road & at work that "its all right man... you'll pull through".

2 comments:

  1. I started cycling a few months back, and yes I think it has changed me also.

    If it was me, I don't know what I would have done... cursed the gentleman or stayed calm.. and I wish I don't have to find it out ... ever!!

    And despite you trying to make it sound like fun(apollo's hospitality, new yr with family, et al), I hope you don't get into a similar incident again.

    Hope to see you on the road soon.. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. hey how are you doing?

    have you fixed anybody for your physiotherapy in B'lore.

    Dr satyajit

    ReplyDelete

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