The accidental date (Part 3)

All around me there was only one colour- white. I was lying down on a soft bed. I tried to lift my head, but it felt very heavy. I thought I was in heaven, when I realized that I had done too many sins to reach heaven. So, I figured out that it must be a hospital.

I tried to move my hand slowly, but my shoulder was paining unbearably. I tried to see where I was hurt, but couldn't see anything. Just then, a nurse entered the ward, and took my pulse.

"Where am I?" I asked her weakly.
"Chennai Kaliappa Hospital, Mylapore." she replied calmly.
"What happened to me? Who brought me here? How long have I been here?" I flooded her with more questions.
She looked at me for a second and paused. "You shouldn't be talking so much, Mr.Karthik. Take some rest." She then gave me an injection on my butt. "You will be alright soon." she smiled as she spoke. I fell asleep again almost immediately.

I don't remember how long I slept, but when I finally woke up, I had been shifted to a spacious room with air-conditioning. My parents were standing by my side.

"Ma, what happened to me?" I asked her when she looked at me.
"Nothing dear. Just take rest now." she replied.
"No ma I want to know. Please tell me." I kept pestering her.
"A car ran over you. Just some minor injuries. Thank god you were wearing your helmet. Otherwise, it could have been fatal." she almost cried.

I imagined how it must have happened. I remembered the bike skidding on the road and falling down in front of the car. The car must have run over me, unable to apply brakes suddenly. Then, some good samaritan must have brought me here and called my mom from my mobile. I was sure only this must have happened. I suddenly remembered something.

"What happened to her?" I asked my mom.
"Happened to who?" my mom looked puzzled.
"She didn't call me? I was going to meet her only. She must have been waiting very near the place where I had the accident. She must have seen it."
"No dear, nobody called. Only Charanya and Swathi called. I told them you had an accident. They came in the morning, and were here till evening."

I realized it was late night already. Then I realized something. She would have never known even if she had seen the accident that it was me, because she had never seen me. Not even my picture. Only I had seen her picture, and I was banking on that to recognize her in Spencer's plaza. I asked my mom to give me the mobile phone. I called her hoping to talk to her, but she never answered my call. I tried five more times, but to no avail. I felt disappointed and drifted off to sleep again.

I woke up early next morning and saw the newspaper and coffee on my side table. I sipped the coffee, and opened the newspaper. I browsed through sports column and the business column. And then turned the pages to read the local news. There were news articles about political meetings, blah blah. And suddenly, an article caught my attention.

Teenage girl caught for reckless driving
Chennai, June 10: A girl aged nineteen was arrested near Spencer's plaza for driving dangerously. Shruthi, a college student, was driving a Toyota Corolla when she ran over a motorbike rider near the Spencer's signal. Luckily, the rider escaped with minor injuries. The girl was found to be not in possession of a valid driving licence, and also seemed to be drunk. She has been remanded in judicial custody for one week.

The accidental date (Part 2)

After the TCS placement debacle, I got placed easily in Wipro Technologies. She was very happy for me, and we spoke on the phone for nearly two hours. I started home that very night, and reached Chennai the next morning. We decided to meet on Tuesday, which was three days away. I readied myself as much as possible. I had a haircut and a shave, and couldn't sleep properly on Monday night.

Unfortunately, I woke up late on Tuesday morning. With no time to have breakfast, I sped towards Spencer's plaza on my bike. I had told her I would meet her sharp at 9.30 AM, but it was already 9.40. I was still about five minutes away from the place, when the signal nearby it just turned red when I was about to pass. I cursed the signal, as I had to wait for another five minutes. The traffic was unusually heavy that day, both motor and pedestrian traffic. I waited for the moment when the signal would turn green. As soon as it did, I revved up the bike to maximum acceleration and shifted gears in quick succession. Then many things happened at the same time.

The car in front of me (it was a silver Toyota Corolla) suddenly swerved to the left. I was going at full throttle, and so couldn't put on the brakes immediately. In a split-second decision, I decided to move further left to avoid collision with the car. But to my dismay, I found that a few pedestrians were walking right on the road, in the middle of my path. I had no option but to apply the brakes, and the next moment I was down on the road with the bike on top of me, as the bike skid on the road. The last thought that occured to me was that the car was gonna run over me.

to be continued....

The accidental date (Part 1)

"Eat something and go!" My mom shouted from the kitchen.

"No, ma. It is already late! I'm leaving. Bye!!" I shouted back and as I went out through the front door, I tripped on the carpet and almost fell down. Unfortunately, my mom happened to see this.

"Come inside, sit down, and drink water. It is a bad sign if you trip when you are going out." she told me.

I started complaining once again about being late already, but she wouldn't listen to anything. So, I had to wait and do all the things she asked me to. After an agonizing two minutes, I rushed downstairs and started my bike. I almost ran over a cat, which was crossing the road just when I had started to accelerate, but somehow managed to maneuver away.

I had first stumbled by her profile in orkut while browsing through my friend's friend's profile. She looked very pretty in her profile picture, so I decided to have a look at her full profile. I was surprised to find that she had almost all her interests similar to mine. I decided to send her a friend request, just to see if she accepted me. I forgot about her as soon as I closed the orkut window.

A couple of days passed, and when I checked my orkut account again, I found that to my surprise, she had added me! And she had even left a scrap in my scrapbook which said 'Hii..glad to meet a person wit similar interests...hope we become gud frnds!!' I was overjoyed, and to add to my happiness, I found that she was online at that time. I replied to her immediately, and somehow, I had the most amazing conversation of my life within the one hour I chatted with her. I told her this, and she told me she felt the same too! It was as though we had known each other for years. We decided to chat at the same time the next day. Again, it was a very interesting one.

Days passed. It was almost a couple of months after we had our first conversation, that we decided to meet up. Though both of us were based in Chennai, I was studying in a university in Thanjavur. That made it extremely difficult to fix a date for the meeting. Finally, we decided to meet at Spencer's plaza during the semester holidays, which was due after my placements.


to be continued....