I was unable to visit my native because of hectic work at office (including weekends). It had been almost 8-10 weeks since I last visited my native. Due to the lucky co-incidence of Christmas falling on Friday, there was 3 days long weekend with relatively less work hence, I visited Dharwad. I met a gang of school friends at a school friend wedding, visited relatives home and had a small function in home during my 3 days stay over there. The 3 days time spent in Dharwad felt like just few moments passed.
Usually I always book Seabird Tourist bus for travelling to my native as I have a Seabird privilege card which fetches me 10% discount on tickets + it is the only travel which has pick up bus near-by to my home. Anyways, it was 10PM and i was thinking, how quickly past 3 days flew-by. I and sister had got the last right upper sleeper seats (atleast we got ticket during long weekend so "last" seat doesn’t matter). The bus left by 10:30PM and since I had to pay ticket amount at Hubli (20Kms away from Dharwad), I was sitting down at some random seat watching other fellow passengers.
There was a mid-30 Dharwadian with full of pan in his mouth sitting in the last row, and another two IT married engineers talking about their routine professional life, a girl who most probably be travelling for the first time to Bangalore alone as her parents were extra careful and telling all safety measures to her till the last moment of bus leaving the stand and another person who was constantly looking into his mobile. I was just glancing through people till Hubli. At Hubli, I paid the ticket price and climbed up to my seat to get a good night sleep after long tiring Sunday. Just before falling off asleep, I have this habit of checking up all social networks, whatsapp, twitter, instagram, snapchat, quora etc and then fall asleep. Also the thought about next day's several pending work at office reminded me to get proper sleep soon.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......
BANG !!! A loud sound horrifyingly woke me up and immediately I opened my eyes. The bus was leaning on left side and my senses were suddenly attentive where I was listening BOOM, glass breaking and screaming sounds. For a moment, I quickly glanced at my sister making sure she is alright and tried covering her & my head as I thought our bus would be rolling over making us fall down or something might hit us on head! Suddenly, the bus leaned on right side then left side and gradually came back to normal level and stopped. OMG. WTH just happened. I was unable to process the events just happened. After few moments, I asked sis, what the time is, it was 3:30AM
As I looked below, by sliding the sheets of our seats, there were full of window glass pieces all over the left side seats of the bus. The people were scary and horrified all over. The lights were turned ON and that pan Dharwadian started shouting and went towards the driver. The two IT engineers followed him. The girl got injured where her hand immovable. Poor girl, she was crying. Few other pasengers sitting on the left side of the bus had glass pieces stuck to their hand/legs with minor blood bleed. I was speechless looking the environment over there.
Then I started to hear arguments, conversations, scolding which gave me an idea of what just happened. There was a truck filled with sugarcane parked on the left side of the road and our bus driver hit it by the side. May be he was sleepy or couldn’t get proper judgment, no idea. People were beating him and shouting at him. If unlucky, God knows what would have happened to all the passengers in the bus, especially those on the left side of bus. Luckily, we were on right side, so nothing happened to us.
The crowd was going crazy on driver as that fellow was replying carelessly and arrogantly. He was talking so casually as though, this kind of accidents happens very frequently. It seems, he joined seabird services just on that day and was driving the bus from that day. I mean, on what basis did someone recruited him in first place and took a decision to let him drive a bus filled with 30+ passengers in midnight on first day of joining!!!
While all this drama was happening on the highway filled with complete darkness other than occasional lights of fast moving vehicles at some place outside of Chitradurga, the "primary" driver (who drove from dharwad before handing over to this new driver) is calmly asleep. People woke him up in anger and told him everything happening around. The cleaner, driver (who hit) and other driver(who was asleep) were all amateurs and had no idea of handling the angry, horrified crowd in such disastrous situation. Btw, that mobile guy was clicking off pics while all this was happening.
I was sitting there, still in disbelief of how lucky the day was. If anything unfortunate had has happened, then gone. Just gone, puff. No trace. No Monday morning office work, no life tensions. Just everything gone in a spur of moment! I was sitting and wondering what were the last conversations I had with each and every one in my life before I slept off and will it be any difference to others without me? It was a very horrible feeling and I hope it should never-ever cross my mind again. Anyways, the bus was standing still for past 45-50mins. There was no supervisor available to answer the call or any alternative bus to come. There was not even a First Aid Box in the bus. Such a pathetic Seabird bus service. The people were out of strength to protest and finally agreed that the “sleeping” driver let drive the bus and glass pieces and sugarcane pieces were cleaned off.
The bus started to move approximately by 5AM and my heart was beating fast. I had never experienced such a thing till now. I mean, once I had mis-drove a car and might have met with an accident, but its okay as the mistake was mine as I was driving (I am responsible). But here, this kind of situation, where you have no control over but have to put your trust, faith on some unknown person (driver), was totally new after such incident. We travel in bus, train, flight several times and we never think of the driver who transported us safely. We never thank him. That unknown random person goes unnoticed. But that day I learnt, he is very important. Next time, when you safely travel, take a moment and thank the driver who was responsible for your safe reach.
Wish you all a very Happy New Year 2016 !
