Indian Roadie

Some physical and psychological scars will keep haunting me for life, especially during the 1st week of February every year. There was lot of #BloodInMyHand (Part 1) 😩.

That is 'the' incident which strengthened my resolve for 'LiveToHelp_HappyToDrive'.

At the outset, scroll over to only the 1st photo attached with this post. Thereafter, start reading. Watch all the photos once again after reading the whole post. Can you see the scar on my forehead which extends from a deep depression immediately on top of my left eyebrow to the cut mark which actually extends right upto the back of my skull?

Remembering a terrible day and the exact time, viz. 10.05 pm in the 1st week of February 2001 exactly 20 years ago.

Thank God that my eyes are intact, and better still that I am alive and kicking and typing out the spine chilling experience for the first time exactly after 20 years.

It was a day of hectic back to back management lectures and client meetings on that fateful day.

I stay near the Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata. By 10 am, my little Neptune Blue Maruti 800 (my ride those days) bearing the WB02B2**0 registration number took me to Small Industries Service Institute (SISI), off B.T.Road, near Indian Statistical Institute (ISI Kolkata) to deliver a talk on the nuances of marketing and selling professionally to 50 odd small and medium enterprise owners in Kolkata.

By 1 pm, I was at a client meeting at Belghoria, followed by another meeting in Salt Lake at 3.30 pm. At 6 pm I was in Vivekananda Road (off C.R.Avenue) for a long meeting to finalize the marketing and revenue earning strategies of a start up venture by a XIM Bhubaneswar passout with a couple of years of experience in family business.

At 9.50 pm, a happy me was on my way back home via Maniktala Main Road.

It was chill outside. All the window glasses were rolled up. The road was surprisingly empty. I had crossed the Maniktala railway underpass and was almost near the very familiar Kankurgachi crossing (just 3 kms from my home) with tramlines neatly laid out alongside the high median dividers.

Those days the bald commie transport minister who always donned a cap or a hat had come up with a weird idea of constructing a foot high concrete platforms, each measuring about 20 ft in length on the main carriageway at 4 - 6 critical junctions in the city for passengers to board or alight from Kolkata's ubiquitous tramcars.

I was driving at a leisurely 30 - 35 kmph. I saw a CSTC state bus stopping awkwardly, I mean somewhat diagonally. I was in no hurry to drive on the tramline between the median divider and the platform. I downshifted to 1st gear and was crawling ahead expecting the bus to move ahead soon enough. It was exactly 10.04pm.

And then terrible misfortune stuck. Suddenly I had this feeling (maybe some optical aberration) that a Tata Sumo playing loud music was about to enter my flank of the road at a breakneck speed from another road at right angles to Maniktala Main Road. Since I was crawling, I was certain that the Sumo would crash into me on the right side.

Very unlike of me, I panicked and revved ahead in 1st gear to avoid being hit at full blast on the right, and clearly remember having screamed in Bangla, "Eh maa. Ki korlam" (Omg .... what did I do)!

At 1500+ RPM in 1st gear, the front right wheel of the little devil hit the concrete platform. The car jumped 4 - 5 feet in the air and overturned on its left side. There were no seat belts in my model of cars those days. Stuck between the two seats I held on to the pillars on the left even while the car slid on its left side for almost 10 feet.

That being a prime business cum residential locality, some people who were closing shop late were witness to the entire sequence of events.

About 8 - 10 of them came running and pushed the car back on its wheels with a huge thud and me trapped inside the front right side mangled vehicle.

My face was in excruciating pain and could barely see anything in the dark. The front doors had jammed. I pulled myself to the front passenger seat and after a couple of hard kicks, the right door flung open. A totally dazed me was carefully lifted out of the car and even while they held on to me, I rested leaning on the right side of the car. The front of the formal light brown coloured full-sleeved shirt was drenched in my own blood and I was continuously spitting blood and hairs. I had some sharp pain on my right knee, too. I took out my folded handkerchief and pressed it on my head where it pained heavily. Believe in me, the finger and the hanky went down into the cracked skull. I was so dazed that the initial feeling was that the surface of my skull indeed was of that shape. The rectangular headlights were still on. Somebody switched it off and retrieved my Ericsson handphone which resembled a hammer.

My saviors held me by the armpit and just about limped/ dragged myself to the Nursing Home at the Kankurgachi crossing. In spite of seeing my bloody looks and with so many very decent people of the locality, the security personnel firmly evicted me from the premises citing possible legal hassles. People tried to reason out with the nursing home manager and attending doctors, but they were adamant on not allowing me to remain in their premises.

I was still in my senses although I was bleeding profusely and talking incoherently. I managed to give a few of my well wishers my business cards. Since I operated from home (then and even now), my wife was reached via the landline number almost immediately.

With me pressing the hanky on my cracked skull oozing blood profusely, I was ferried to Divine Nursing Home in Beliaghata, about 1.5 kms from my residence and also 1.5 kms from the accident spot in an autorickshaw.

The treatment meted out in Divine Nursing Home (NH) was no better, if not worse. I was made to lie on the glass top of the table at the reception. I kept mumbling seeking for Nebasulf powder and some assistance to clean the hairs from my eyes, nose and mouth. Nobody in the NH wanted to have anything to do with me. A very famous elderly surgeon who had his own NH at Harrington Street was on a visit to Divine at around 11 pm then. The moment he came close to me, my wife, Diya broke down uncontrollably and sought for his intervention. He did nothing and in his highly accented English smiled and said, "Gentleman, how did you manage to do this to yourself" and left 😡

Diya started frantically calling up my regular contacts. My very dear sister Suchanda Sar, a successful eye-surgeon herself and her husband Krisnendu said that they will rush to Birla's Calcutta Medical Research Institute (CMRI) in Alipore immediately leaving their 5 yrs old son suffering from high fever all alone at home. They advised Diya to transfer me to CMRI in an ambulance. My friends and well wishers in sales and marketing in reputed corporate entities also assured Diya that they too were on their way to CMRI post midnight.

My wife, brother-in-law and the good samaritans who rescued me from my car frantically ran all around to get an ambulance. With blood still oozing out unhindered from my skull and me in phenomenal pain, the ambulance reached me upto the door steps of the well equipped Emergency section of CMRI at 1am and I was wheeled in to the operation theatre. By then 3 hrs had lapsed, well beyond the fabled golden hours after the mishap.

14 stitches involving drilling 28 holes into my already cracked nut had to be dug without any anaesthesia. The whole process had to be done without anaesthesia because the trauma involved my skull and brain. The medical professionals had to ensure that I couldn't be allowed to doze off. The process of removing thick/ clotted blood from my head was insane and I must have screamed so loud that I was audible 5 kms away. I will never forget the way they kept pressing my skull while my feet rested against the wall. The scene of blood spraying out like that from a 'pichkari' onto the walls and the dress of Krisnendu was so scary that it jolts me out of sleep even after two decades.

Thereafter, the CT Scan and MRI done at the wee hours revealed that I had survived serious permanent damage or even death by an whisker. Suddenly, I passed out for a short while, maybe for 15 - 20 mins. When I regained my senses, I realized that the doctors were preparing to shift me to a private cabin in some higher floor in the huge hospital. My demand was very clear. Since I had survived, I had to return home to my daughter Diksha who was just 3 yrs then. I didn't want to lose anymore time to be back to her, almost 13 kms away.

With a huge bandage on my head, I was back home at 3.30 am.

P.S: There might be a Part 2 of this article at a future date.

Can anybody guess what exactly split my skull into two?

Keep guessing. Keep commenting 😊

Thank you Suchanda and Tito (Krisnendu) for always standing rock solid with us. Love you'll a lot.

My Ma, Diya and Diksha always keep thanking you'll, especially for your support on that dreadful night.