This is a view of the river Krishna from the hotel Vijay Vihar at Nagarjuna Sagar, Hyderabad.
This trip done way back in August 2007 holds bitter-sweet memories for me. It was amongst the first trips, aside from the honeymoon, of course, that the husband and I undertook as a newly-wed couple. We were three families on this road trip from Hyderabad: Us, V-K, also newly-weds and U-N, an older couple with a 3 year old toddler. All six of us squeezing into a tiny Alto car was an experience in itself!
Most of the particulars about the trip are a blur for me now, except our return journey. N was driving the car and the rest of us were singing and chattering away when we saw a small boy with a stick in his hand crossing the road dangerously, even as we came speeding along. Although, N had slowed the car sufficiently in anticipation, we were brought to an abrupt halt with a loud THUD! I closed my eyes tightly, heart beating rapidly. I thought the boy was killed. The men got out. Thankfully, the boy was alive and only injured. The loud noise was of the stick breaking. We wanted to take the boy to a nearby doctor but what we didn't realize was how much difficult this was going to be.
We were soon surrounded by a crowd of villagers and relatives of the boy, screaming and shaking their fists at us. Some women crying out loudly as though the boy had died. No amount of pacifying could have them even listen to us. We were sorry and aghast at what had happened but the fact remained that the boy was crossing dangerously without adult supervision and above all was injured and needed to be taken to the hospital pronto. There was needless chaos created with people concerned and not concerned talking and screaming in a regional language that only U and N could understand and speak. That, we were accepting responsibility to take the boy to a nearby hospital, see to it that he was attended to and also pay for the medical expenses, was simply lost to the milling crowd that seemed to get out of control. We even asked them to call the police to sort the situation out but they weren't too keen on the police too.
It then dawned on us that the people out there were only ganging up against us in a bid to extract as much money as they could, the condition of the victim notwithstanding. By cornering us and attacking us thus, they were trying to intimidate us with their sheer number. It was then N decided to take things into control. He is an influential business man with a strong social network. Being a business man also meant, he was equipped to handle people and adverse situations in more ways than one. Even in that far-flung remote area, he managed to find a known guy who also happened to be a doctor. It was agreed that the boy would be taken to that doctor in a local autorickshaw with one of us accompanying the villagers. We also thought it necessary to file a police complaint. The husband decided to accompany N and the villagers to the local doctor while the rest of us were to file an FIR and proceed home.
The silence during the rest of the journey is still fresh in my mind. That, I was shaken is to put it mildly. Amongst all thoughts that were running in my mind was that my husband of 6 months was still in the company of those roughians, albeit with the resourceful N and help at hand. V, who drove us back home, tried his best to lighten up the mood and kept reassuring me and the rest of us. U, a strong personality herself, seemed fairly in control, either because she was sure of N's mettle in such situations or because she saw it as her responsibility to keep calm. However, I breathed easily only in the wee hours of morning when N and the husband returned home safely.
