Sixty Seconds
After spending four idle days in the hotel, I finally decided to step out for the purpose I was traveling that country, which was going through a 'civil' situation at that time. A candid discussion with local staff and cab driver's prelim assessment of destination was good enough to take a chance.
At the beginning of the lifetime adventurous journey, we passed through some barricades and some burning tyres & effigies. At every few meters, some fringe elements were making the environment a bit uneasy. Nevertheless, we continued, though with utmost caution. The cab driver was smart enough to dodge potentially troublesome routes. Within some minutes of drive, the black smoke of the burning tyres was clean.
The cab was finally at a 40-50 feet broad highway now. Before we could take a sigh of relief, the cab driver did sense some trouble coming across. Within moments I realized that a mob of 100-200 upset protesters, carrying banners or flags and shouting slogans were marching towards us at the distance of around, let say, 100 meters by now. The driver slowed down the cab, and so a city bus driving just next to our cab. As the driver continued to crawl ahead making 100s of quick assessments inside his brain about the velocity and intensity of hooligans, they were processing the same about the vehicle. Despite a bit of language barrier, I and the driver have suddenly started swift communication through eyes & gestures amidst the rising tension inside the cab.
As my heart started skipping a beat, the driver made a courteous attempt to relax me, which I roughly decoded in my favor as "Don't worry sir, you are my guest and I'll take care of you".
In a fraction of seconds, the mob which was brisking till now suddenly took a wild charge towards us with pelting stones aiming at the vehicles. A blink of an eye and a sharp bang sound hit my ears. The windscreen of the city bus, next to our cab, was broken into pieces by an arched stone. Before I could process further, another stone landed at the bonnet of the cab leaving a big dent. As an obvious phycological reflex of the shattering glass followed by the bus passengers' ear-deafening noise mixed with the charging mob, both drivers took the command-in-charge of the virtual war-zone and applied the reverse gear of their respective vehicles with the hard accelerator.
The rear traffic got panic with these unexpected movements and sparsed as much as possible. The bus was taking its own time to run through the back, our cab was now wheeling fast but not before dashing a couple of nearby vehicles, including a two-wheeler. I'm still not sure if the cab left them unhurt. The road was wide enough at least for two-wheelers to make a quick u-turn.
After driving few more meters unstopped in reverse gear, the cab driver got an opportunity to went off the main road and halted at the service lane only to make a u-turn. By now the turtle speed bus in the reverse path was surrounded by an angry mob who were treating the bus real bad with stones and flags' sticks. The passengers started getting off to protect themselves. I kept watching the mayhem through the rear windscreen till our cab sped off on the highway in seconds. At this time the brain wasn't in a state of processing the number of probable injured or even bad left behind, the bus passengers, the loss of public property, or the cab damage. I was only able to chant with folded hands attempting to attain some mental peace. The driver passed a faded smile at me. I did the same.
All about 60 seconds of millions of emotions. All about reflexes. All about a rush of adrenaline. All about the blend of predictability and uncertainties. All about life or d...
As I look back today with a cup of coffee, I can make hundreds of better choices. I can run the entire sequence through my well-polished prism. I can assess what could have been a right or wrong move like a lazy chessboard. I can give my driver a grammatically correct page of advice. I can also tell him that instead of running the car in the reverse gear hastily hitting others, he could have followed page number three of the emergency manual kept in the glove compartment of the car. I can virtually do anything because I just have to make an opinion today. I can prove that it wasn't the wise choice, even if I know that there was no choice to make a choice.
~The Hawk Eye
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This is a real incident that happened during a trip a few years back. Some stressing visuals of a recent horrific event freshened the memories.
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