What My Body Remembers
A prompt that brought back memories of my first accident which I strongly believe (and which Udit vehemently opposes), left my nose and chin a bit slanted. He thinks I was born like this!
My body remembers a loud dull sound, a brief flight, the whack of the fall, the taste of road, metal and blood, the smell of wound, and the first two thoughts that flashed before me as I lay limp, conscious but limp, on the road.
Am I dead? Is someone else dead?
Neither. Thank God for that. Jesus and Mary, specifically.
I had been in an accident and was lying in front of Lupita Hall, the church bang opposite my building in Telco Colony in Jamshedpur.
21st August, 1996
I was in the 12th standard and was in a scooter race with two of my classmates. We were returning from tuition. Me, on my dad’s grey Bajaj Super/Chetak and my two classmates Basu and Navin, on the latter’s automatic Kinetic Honda.
The race was an after-tuition ritual. It was either the cycle or the scooter. The route was familiar. The colony was beautiful with little traffic and good wide roads—a little slope here, a little climb there.
We were on the last leg of the race, I was ahead. We took the left from the fork soon after the Engineer’s hostel. A small rocky plateau with eucalyptus trees was on the right and two-storeyed buildings were on the left. Theses building were on a higher ground than the road. I changed gears and accelerated soon after the big speed bump.
Another fork, and we took the right this time. The rocky plateau with eucalyptus trees was still on the right and a new set of buildings on the left were at least 6 feet (and at the most 12 feet) lower than the road. Imagine the flats were in a well — that is how I always imagined it as a child!
And BANG and then a THWACK… I thought I could hear the blood whooshing out. And some commotion. And a faint, “Nothing happened to them…”
The tuition was from 6 to 7.30 in the evening. It was a Friday evening and mum and dad had just settled down to watch Chitrahaar when they heard the loud, dull BANG!
Now that spot in front of our house was quite accident prone—so dad thought “damn, another accident”. Mum looked at him and as she got up from the dining table she said, “get your car keys, it is Sumi”.
She knew. She didn’t need to confirm from the window. My parents ran down from our second floor house. And there I was.
I remember seeing blur images of them taking me to our car, the ivory white Fiat parked in the ‘well’. I still don’t know exactly how they carried me from the road, down a flight of eight steps and finally to the backseat of the car. They must have had help!
My body remembers fear creeping in—the fear of missing school, classes, and my 12th board exams. Fear of my parents getting angry with me.
“Where was the scooter? Damn!”
“Shit, what if I had flown and fallen 12 feet below in this ‘well’.”
“Will I walk?”
“Am I dead?”
“Is that the light at the end of the tunnel?”
“Why is it flashing?”
The things one thinks of when they have been in an accident!
In the backseat, I lay on my mum’s lap, my mind on overdrive, as I watched the street lights go by.
Obviously, I didn’t die or even pass out.
I had eight stitches above my left eye. “Ah I fell on my left”, I thought as I lay in pain on the ER bed smelling of betadine and with zero sensation above my eyes that had just been stitched up.
“But just eight stitches? Not a single broken bone or even a fracture”, I continued thinking, unsure of whether to feel proud or disappointed.
My two racer friends stood next to my hospital bed, shit scared.
I mumbled to them, “I won”.
They giggled, in relief. They promised to take notes for me at school. It must have been the guilt talking. They always took notes from me!
Anyway, I think the three of us were really scared of my mum. We were never going to hear the end of this. Her daughter was nearly dead, wasn’t she?
But Dad was cool, calm and composed. Both at the hospital, the next day and the weeks ahead. The next day when the mechanic came and saw the mangled scooter, he asked “jo chala rahe tha who zinda hai?1”.
Dad nodded and chuckled a “Haan, zinda hai”.2
My body remembers the rapidly swelling face. My body remembers the pain.
What my body doesn’t remember is the last 50 metres before I crashed headlong into another scooter coming out of the church with a small child riding in the front.
This was the accident I mentioned in my last piece Thank You Pappa. The prompt—My Body Remembers—was during my first writing workshop with and at in July last year.
The one who was driving, is he alive?
Yes, she is alive.
Remember this as if I read it yesterday. I hate accidents but you wrote about it so endearingly (like you write other stories) that I didn’t feel panic and dread only felt care and compassion and wonder at everything that happened. ♥️
I am hope when you returned to school, you emulated that iconic Ajay Devgn entry scene in Phool Aur Kante. Bajaj Chetak on one side, Kinetic Honda on the other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBMfOx9HpkE