The 1st time I broke the tail-lights of my car; it broke my heart too, and left me truly inconsolable. On the 2nd occasion, my mind was shuttling among varied emotional states.
Today, when it repeats itself the 3rd time, I am force-fed philosophy.
An inside voice is reverberating, “Seldom put your life in back gear!”
And, as I must, I am writing as such, like always, to break the ennui.
Incident One: The Post Without Peradventure
That February, Rover, my car, was only a one-month-old road-roamer, when it realized the predicament of its master’s road sense.
I and two of my colleagues went to our HOD’s home on the sad occasion of the demise of his mother and instead of returning via the safe route we had taken to reach there, I embarked on a hazardous short-cut way back. That tricky lane needs some description because regrettably, I would discover that it was a dead end.
The topography was something like this:
The main road was a steep incline of 60 degrees and the lane in question, branched off from the former at 120 degrees to the right and curved back like an ellipse, and importantly, all the time, descended several feet every second of Rover’s excursion, besides thrilling the occupants with its transverse span of just a couple of inches added to Rover’s own!
To steer back Rover in that lane craning my head behind was defying prudence and my ability was check-mated when it rammed against an electric post. The same moment, the world felt like coming to a halt. I clasped my head with both hands and froze. Mukhi and Baideo were making unintelligible noises. Gradually, I could scan people pouring out into the lane. My damaged car in that lepto-lane was scene for overwhelming pathos!
Incident Two: Baker’s Special and a Crash
Simone sat next to me in Rover, parked in front of Baker’s Special and I was waiting for her to finish chomping at a hot dog and a sandwich. As soon as it was done, I jump-started Rover in back gear and straightway crashed against a goods carrier mini-truck that had stealthily juxta-positioned itself behind my vehicle in that darkness. That served me the pot-pourri of myriad emotions; that of rage, guilt, fear, vexation and agony. Simone tried her utmost to dissolve them, partly succeeding to produce an outer calm, but inside me, the incident felt like damnation!
Incident Three: Garage woes
Today, early in the morning, I did it again, just while taking Rover out of my garage, in back gear. I, however, did not become fretful. Instead, I dropped my head and pondered for some length of time.
By the end of the day, my enlightenment features the following, so to say, conclusions:
1. In life, and always before dying, one has to spot the important things when one looks behind.
2. The penchant for repeating the same mistakes is obtrusive nuisance.
3. Repetitive patterns have a universal distribution.
4. One can never have a correct knowledge of one’s potentials.
5. A hat-trick is a milestone.
