Near Death experience

Death stares at me. I don’t recognize it straight up. It’s in the form of a rusted guard fitted to an equally ancient truck. The sides of the truck is a dull green, faded due to long hours in the sun.

Colorful palandi (woolen bunches adorned with gold beads) hang from the fenders. A fresh bunch of lemon & green chilies hang from the middle of the guard, to ward off evil spell.

I absorb this sitting in a tiny three wheeler (rickshaw), Mumbai’s very own local conveyance. We are at a cross section & India is a land of very enterprising drivers. Everyone is in a hurry to bypass the other on the road.

The mammoth truck, a dumper of sorts carrying soil, was perpendicular to our rickshaw & hurtling in our direction from the right. My dare devil rickshaw driver in a reckless miscalculation of speed, tried to cross the intersection before the truck reached the dissecting roads. At the nth moment, both drivers realize their folly & step on their brakes.

All this happens in 1/100th of a second but it’s as if I can see it with amazing clarity. There’s an eerily screeching noise, as I smell burning rubber against tar with the intense friction & the truck comes to a halt inches away from where I sit.

I was busy wishing a friend on her birthday & boosting her sagging lonely spirits promising to go gallivanting, just the two of us when this happens. I’m stunned. In a state of shock. It takes me a few seconds to recognize the gravity of the situation.

My mind is a jumble of entwined spaghetti. Now when I think about it, I just remember flashes going through my mind. My daughter kissing me goodbye this morning as she pranced to school. Dad adjusting his spectacles, mum reminding me to pick up something on my way back from work, my friend Shekhar who I was supposed to call after wishing Maya.

I’m jolted back by the angry animated adjectives exchanged between the two drivers. I ask my driver to calm down & drive.

I’m thinking…what would it be like if I had died today. Would I have felt pain? Does one get escorted by some halo bearing fairies? Would I remain looking fit & young till eternity?

How would I get my message across to my daughter if I had to advise her as she coped in her sensitive years of her teens. My parents. Would my dad’s weary heart take the ordeal? Mum..Oh yes, what about mum? We have been like sisters exchanging dirty jokes, cracking up talking about amusing incidents from our yester years. How would she get over the loss of that friend who listens to her, supports her & sometimes advises her as well.

Then there are a whole lot of other things like me not hugging my brother when I met him last, not being verbal about my love & affection to people I care deeply about, not devoted enough time at the orphanage, not explored Switzerland & Paris, not attended the Para-Gliding course I have been yearning for long, not learned swimming….Oh boy! I'm already tired thinking of all that I have to do before being sent to dust. Sorry God! You shall have to wait.

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