It was supposed to be R's birthday yesterday. Supposed to be, because i thought it was and managed to convince a whole bunch of others about it as well. As a consequence, the surprise we planned for her got buried six feet under; i got abused left, right and centre; R got pissed because it seemed like none of her friends remembered her birthday.
Of course, i was the root cause for all this, and i got punished appropriately as well - i was the victim of an above-average road accident for the first time in...umm, my life i think.
K was the mastermind behind the surprise that was put together for R. We met last night at belly dancing class, finished a con-call and then got to Church Street to buy f&b. From there, we left for R's place to meet up with the rest and try to do damage control to the surprise party we had planned. Close to Prestige Elgin, it struck me that i hadn't told her about the boy. (Oooooh, incidentally, i haven't posted about him; update is, i managed to get in touch with him but he hasn't called back or made any attempt to get in touch).
So while we were talking, we came close to MICO on Adugodi road. Now, this place has a mother of a speedbreaker that's almost always wet with the waste that no matter what, manages to find its way from the naala close by. Such an ideal setting for an accident, one would say. And it was. When our Activa and the Maruti van ahead of us reached the speedbreaker, our actions were almost identical: while the van braked, sped and suddenly braked hard again, we braked, sped and skid.
It was a pretty bad fall, especially for K. Thank God for her helmet and overcoat. Both of us fell on our right side, with K's shoulder taking all the impact while her knee knocked against the asphalt. I scraped my elbow quite badly (it still hurts like a bitch) and injured my wrist (a pain that i noticed only this afternoon). The most damage was done to my chappal - it just snapped - and my jeans - the rivets that hit the road as i did, came off. Plenty of people came to our rescue - a woman even offered to drop us off in her car to our destination. Politely we refused, and like brave knightesses (why isn't there something like that?) we got back onto the bike and rode to R's.
Funny thing is, when the van braked the first time, both of us instinctively knew we were going to get hurt. Falling just before a speedbreaker meant that our heads would've suffered had we hit it. But it also meant that traffic on either side was slow at that point, so we were saved from getting crunched under wheels like gravel. It was almost like the speedbreaker couldn't decide whether it wanted to be good to us or bad. (Must've been created in the month of June, poor thing.) Surprisingly, our clothes weren't dirtied by the muck.
When we got to R's apartment complex, K parked her bike; we both looked at each other and burst out laughing. And it didn't stop there. We got into R's place, where a waiting B, V and P were only shocked that we could be laughing like two madwomen when we had just had a pretty bad accident.
Ice packs were brought forth, Dettol bottles and cotton brandished like instruments of torture, with B and P as our tormentors. An hour later, K still couldn't move her hand so we took her to Sagar Apollo and got an X-ray done. No dislocation, but inflammation of tissues around the bone causing excruciating pain. P and I got her into a sling and got back home to find a very angry R trying to smoke away her fury. We wished her a happy birthday, but she didn't respond. That sort of set the mood for the rest of the evening. Twenty minutes later, we were out of there because R just didn't seem to be interested in responding to our efforts to make everything seem normal. And the accident wasn't so bad, really. Nothing life-changing happened to us - K and i were in one piece, nothing broken.
I rode back with P on his bike at 2 in the morning. Dad was asleep, so this morning i explained my injury with a watered-down version of the accident. While coming to office, he declared, "Take it as an omen, and avoid staying out late from now on."
I don't know about the latter half of his statement, but it sure did seem like an omen: i have now inaugurated my current account with the Demon of Road Accidents.
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