That day I was returning from the examination center was like any other normal day. I just left the parking lot of St. Dominic Savio’s High School after appearing for my Hindi exam. It was then I saw a huge traffic jam in front of my car.
My father told me to drive patiently without blocking the path for foot traffic. Since I was a minor in 2011, I didn’t have a valid driving license then. Despite that, my father used to allow me to drive the car but only when he was in the passenger seat.
At that moment, all the vehicles were crawling up to 1km, and so were we. Somehow we reached the main road. Though I could see a lot of students were moving on the sides of the road, I was happy with the lesser vehicles there.
Now I could drive fast and overtake others without breaking a sweat. But what I didn’t know was that God has some other plans for me. The moment I speed up the car past 40km/hr, suddenly a boy started crossing the road from the left side. I tried controlling the car to the best of my efforts but it didn’t work. The car kept sliding and it hit that boy who was crossing the road to give something to his friend on the other side. Though I was extremely scared at that time, my father was quite conscious.
He saw a boy trying to hold my collar from the opened window and stop my car somehow. It was then he told me loudly “Move, move, move”. His words gave me a bit of confidence and I put the car in first gear immediately and pressed the accelerator pedal to the fullest. My car jumped like a frog and we were out of the accident scene in no time. After that, I drove the car as fast as I could without making another accident.
After we had covered 2-3kms, my father came to know that the problem was still not over. He saw some bikes were trying to overtake our car from the left side and yelling “Gadi rok, Gadi rok,” repeatedly. Then he said, “keep driving the car and don’t let any bike overtake you”. “They are trying to stop us,” he added further. After listening to his words I made sure I don’t give even a little space to someone from the right side at least.
He then advised me not to take the straight route we were using frequently, instead follow his instructions only. At one point of time, he has also made a wrong decision and told me to turn into a blocked road. We didn’t know about that when we entered but when we reached the end of that road, we realized our mistake.
At the same time, two bikers came to us and started saying “Why did you make the accident and fled away?”. My father said, “You must have seen the wrong car, we haven’t made any accident”. Then they started looking at the registration number of our car and memorizing it. While all this was going on, I took a U-turn and started running again. The bikers also started chasing us but we didn’t bother just because we had already left the accident spot.
Now, even if they reported the accident to the police it would be a bit difficult for them to prove whether our car had hit that boy or others. By the way, it was not my fault that led to the accident. That boy was only crossing the road without even checking whether any vehicle was coming from either side or not. In short, he was looking at Tokyo and talking to India.
That aside, I continued driving the car as per my father’s instructions and after 20-30 minutes, we reached home without any issue. I don’t know what happened to those bikers but they didn’t meet us after that interaction.
Once we parked our car at home, my father started checking out the damages. It was nothing but a small dent above the headlight, apart from that everything was fine. After that, my father told me to cover the car immediately and not to talk about the accident with anyone.
Then I had lunch and was thinking about the accident throughout. As not expected, two of my friends arrived at my house after a couple of hours. They told me that they know I met with an accident. I was shocked and didn’t know what to say. Then I calmed down somehow and said “Ok, please don’t tell that to anyone.”
Then they started telling the full story of what happened, “After you ran away from there, that boy was taken to the hospital immediately.” I listened to them patiently and guessed that now every student in my class would be knowing about this.
What was more frightening was that two or three of my friends whom I used to fight in the class were present at the accident spot. They revealed my details to the friends of that boy who met with the accident. This news made me restless and after a couple of minutes, I asked them to leave.
Then I went to my father and shared everything that I have heard. He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll find a way to avoid the problem.” Then I went to my room and started checking out the schedule of the rest of the exams. After going through it, I came to know that I have to appear in Science and Computer exams in the coming days. But the question was “How?”.
My father was confident that the friends of the injured boy would try to catch me at the examination center and take me to the police. So, he came up with a unique idea and that worked. I conveyed the message to the friends of the injured boy through my friends that I am not going to appear in the rest of my exams. This way they won’t focus on me too much and study for their own exams. In the meanwhile, I started preparing for my next exam.
My father took me to the examination center by public transport and told me to enter the school campus only after 5 minutes. I did exactly the same and believe me each of my friends were shocked seeing me in the examination hall that day. We have taken a different route from my home to school that was least familiar to common people. That idea worked for us and we didn’t face any issue on the last exam as well.
After a couple of months, the results came and I was passed with an 8.4 CGPA in my high school exams.