"Have a safe journey, Aditi. This is the start of a new chapter. Good luck. Don't forget me in Chennai."
Safe journey, they said.
Some old chapters of my life had to be closed for this new one to be open. Fifteen days before that day, I started making plans with all my friends, showing my face one last time before I go. With less time to close my past doors, I enjoyed as much as I could. May-end and the beginning of June were quite eventful. On 6th June, as I packed the last-minute essentials and couriered some stuff to my address in Chennai, I kept checking my phone again and again to see if anybody has texted. No texts. 6th June was somehow the loneliest day of 2019. The anxiety bubbling inside me got the best of me and there was no one I could talk to, about it. I don't blame them.They didn't know I was anxious anyway. I was excited too because all I could look at was what lied ahead of me. Past was just on my papers and certificates which were already on their way to the city. Past was also locked in my recesses safely. At 10, I watched one episode of The Crown and put myself to sleep because I could only afford 5 hours of sleep that day. At 2:55, I snoozed my alarm and I used those five minutes to check my text messages. My whatsapp was flooded with texts about safe journey, good lucks, godspeed and whatnot. People actually care, man. I received texts from people who I thought were just momentary phases of my life. Somehow, the storm inside me was too strong to be calmed by all this positivity. I got up and dressed up. I clicked one last picture with my dog and touched the feet of my parents. Bidding goodbye to Mishti was the hardest, I begged my mom to see her till the last minute before the lift doors close. I wish I could tell her when I'd be meeting her next because she probably thought I will be back by the evening. In the evening, she sat by the door of my room till she finally gave up and fell asleep.
We took a cab and I put my giant suitcase in the front seat. My dad sat to the left and my mother sat between us. In the history of my car journeys with my family, this was the first time I hadn't put on my earphones. It wasn't done as a favour, staying with them for as long as i can seemed like the right thing to do. My dad was talking about traffic rules to the driver who was quite friendly. My thoughts were racing but my family is good at setting an atmosphere where I can hide well. We halted at a red light on the Ashoka Road and took a turn. Suddenly, the car jerked towards the railing of the road and my neck twisted to the right, my head hitting the handle on the top of the seat. My mother screamed and the car stopped. The world stopped for a second too. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck..." I went on with my traumatic chanting. For 10 seconds we were sitting in the car trying to get our senses back. When I got mine, I tried to shut my mother who started panicking in the middle of a road at 4:30 in the morning. The driver got out of the car and in another 5 minutes there were about 4-5 cars parked in the vicinity of the accident. A truck had hit out car from the bumper, destroying the whole bumper area. Few men got out and asked me to get my parents out immediately. "Mamma, chin up. I need to get to the airport." We all were aliv.. I put out my suitcase and got to the other side to get my dad out of the car. He was bleeding from his forehead and his eyes were blank. He was in a shock. More than the accident, I was scared of him. He cannot die today. Nobody dies today. I patted his back and forced him out. A very kind gentleman offered to give us a lift to Terminal 3. We didn't have time to think so I shoved my suitcase in the front seat of his car and asked my parents to get in. My dad got out of the state of shock but his awareness wasn't intact as of yet. The rest of the journey was all about me containing my anxiety. I calmed my mother. We stopped at 24*7 for Savlon for my dad but there was none so that man gave him his handkerchief. When we reached the airport, we thanked the man. He was an angel.
First thing I did was drop my parents to The Departure and book a cab. "Bhaiya please araam se chalana, abhi abhi accident karwa ke aaye hai." My mother left with tears in her eyes and dad waved me goodbye. I hurried to the Arrival as Sehrish kept on calling me. There are just so many thoughts associated with this day. I entered with a huge bump on my forehead but all that mattered in that moment was getting through the security. The sound of the truck hitting our car kept echoing inside my head. We took a sub because I haven’t had breakfast. The kind airhostess gave me an ice-can to put on my forehead. It pained but it wasn't important. I was about to start a new journey. Sehrish was with me and I believed I can get past this. When I reached Chennai, I called my mother to inform and she told me dad had been taken to the hospital for stitches. I wasn't worried. For what we had seen, I was just glad we came out alive. My mom kept complaining about how badly she hurt her leg. She wanted to believe she was hurt the most so I gave her that. It was difficult for them, leaving their kid with a car bang. All this sounds fancy when you are watching a movie but too bad, the reality is most often different.
In Chennai, I met Sristi and things were fine until two months had passed and I still had flashbacks from the day. The next morning when I got naked for the shower, I saw a couple of bruises on my chest, neck and hands. I am quick to getting bruised anyway. As for the trauma, it wasn't dysfunctional but I did live with it. I don't know whether i should call it my adjustment issues but the images from the jerk of the car and the very sound of it haunted me every now and then. When the doors would slam or when someone would tap me from behind. When the bell would ring in the middle of my sleep or when the thunder would be too loud at 2 AM. I would cower in fear in my bed but I was coping. I could feel my body covered by a fragile blanket because anything could make me anxious. Anything. My mom never really asked me just how much the accident impacted me and little did I even know about Post-traumatic stress. Perhaps, because I was finding answers in the outside rather than on the inside.
If I was scared of being alone in the flat, it's obviously because it's a new flat and big at that. We would laugh off my phone calls from my room to Sehrish' s room in the middle of the night when the thunder would make the windows shiver. The sound of the wind from the doors were generally like those from horror movies so you can't blame yourself for being scared of it. It was only after a long time it occurred to me that maybe the trauma from the accident could be one reason too. I just had too high an expectation from myself. I thought I am bigger than these obstacles, the show must go on. But no one really asked me how did I feel? The scars were a testimony to the physical damage but some part of my inside had been long damaged and I was never too great at emotional mechanics.
I did talk about the accident to some of my friends but in the process, I only realized that I was reliving the trauma for no good. "You know you left Delhi with a bang." Some people will always quantify the damage with just how much the truck damaged the car but it wasn't that easy. Our minds don't work that simply. Our minds are always interpreting signals from the universe. An accident did not have to happen on the day of my beginning. Maybe then I could undo all the negative bits. Maybe if I had put on the earphones, the sound of the jerk wouldn't have haunted for so long that it did. Maybe if I had travelled alone, perhaps my dad would have saved.. But sometimes, I think of what this universe did to me that day. It brought me a man who could drop me to the airport when my car was in wreck and I was about to miss a flight. It brought me a kind airhostess to heed to my pain and a friend’s shoulder to lean on.
But this is what it is, even if it is shit. We lived it and we are going to have to live with the memory of it too.
Safe journey, they said.