Accidents Happen
By Raghvi Jain

As I stand here waiting for the bus, suddenly there is an eerie silence that haunts the streets. A while ago everything seemed to be commonplace, noisy and colourful on the road but the storm has taken it all away with itself. The sound of the vehicles appears to snatch life from the streets. It is no more the usual honking of cars or the rattling of the old city bus or the chaotic rolling of bike wheels but a peculiar sound that nobody can hear. A sound that seems so alien. A sound that kills my soul. The smoky odour from the vehicles seems to have polluted the city with its violent fumes.

The aroma of hot coffee brewing at the roadside coffee house did not tempt me anymore. I was unaffected by the rotting stench of the sewage line or the wafting aromas from the florist shop nearby. All worldly stuff appeared meaningless. I realized that eventually all things have to end up in ashes. I could sense the wrath of fire; the burning smell almost choked my throat. Everything finishes in a big black hole of darkness and there is no coming back from there.

I felt a sudden rush of adrenaline through my body. The feeling was not new but the muscular spasm it left within me this time was something I had never experienced before. It tore my body inwardly in a way that was much more painful than the contractions I experienced when I laboured a child, my one and only son. Being a part of me, he gave me a reason to live when I gave birth to him twenty years ago but now I felt as if my body was not my own. This betrayal made me cry. I wish I could tell my son one last time how much I loved him, before seeing him touch the gates of heaven. I wish I could stop the truck from crashing him to death right in front of my eyes. All I could hear was random people’s clicking of tongues and murmurs saying, “Accidents happen”.

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