It was 27th september 2011,
yet another Tuesday with normal day and normal office life. I had the
usual weekly client call. I started by 9.20 p.m. from office. My project colleague dropped me at the Velachery, MRTS Railway station. He wondered, at what time I
would be reaching home. I made an approximate extimate and told him
that I will be reaching home by 10.45 p.m in the worst case.
The train made it to Chindadripet station by
10.20 p.m and as usual I took my bike from the station parking lot
and started my way back to home. It was here I made the first
unusuall mistake. I forgot to turn on the bike headlights. I thought I
could be able to reach home even before the time I estimated,
But things turn out the other way.
Few thoughts were going though my mind.
Just a day before, I visited my friend who was recovering from an
unexpected road accident. So I decided to remain caution while I
drive and made up my mind not to drive above 45kmph. As I expected,
the roads were empty as it was already above 10 p.m.
Finally I reached, the Langs garden
road, where this unexpected thing happened. There were two other two
wheelers travelling by my side, one on my left and the other to my
right. I was travelling at exactly the same speed as them. Neither
did I overtook them, nor I tried to slowed down. Suddenly I spotted this
big ditch ahead of my path. I know I can't stop as the road was a bit
sloppy and trying to apply sudden break might be risky. I could not
take a turn as I have vehicles on both my side. So I decided to get
though the ditch. But to my surprise, the ditch was a bit deeper than
I expected. Though the front wheel successfully crossed the ditch,
the rear wheel skidded, and I lost balance & fell down instantly.
Blood starts oozing through my left
hand. Both my shirt and pant were torn. As there were no nearby
shops and the road was empty, I started again in my bike in hopes
that I could reach home and clean up all the mess. But soon after I
start, my legs started trembling. I stopped before a shop, and
noticed that both my leg knees were badly hurt. I got some water
packets from the shop, cleaned the wounds and called my brother for
help. The rest is a big story. The funny part was, I finally reached
home only by 11.30 p.m.
Today I started wondering how it
all happened. I know I was driving with utmost caution but even then I
was not able to stop the approching danger. I tried to recollect the
sequence of events that led to this incident.
The first and foremost was, It was a Tuesday, which mean I had client call, and that I could only be able
to start by 9.15 p.m. The later it gets, the lesser the traffic and
so I will be travelling a bit faster than usual. I was travelling at
around 40 kmph when I met with the accident. If I have started
earlier , I could have never drove at such speed in that road because
of traffic. So this was the first blow.
Next, I missed to turn on the head
lights when I start driving from the parking lot. If I had the lights
on, I might have got more chance of spotting the ditch from a
distance. So this was the second event.
And there are two two
wheelers travelling
at the same speed as mine on either side, which prevented me from
taking a sudden side turn. This was the third cause.
I could recollect, that just a day
before, I refilled my bike tyre air pressure. The higher the tyre
air pressure, lower is the surface area of contact of the tyre with the
road and lower is the road grip and hence more chance of bike
skidding. This was yet another hidden event behind the incident.
And above all, the most important cause
was the big ditch in the middle of the main road. If there isn't a
ditch, this incident coultn't have happened. The ditch may have
appeared natually due to recent monsoon rain or because
of some man made electrical or drainage work. In either case whether
it was natural or man made, I am sure that, that ditch was surely a
gateway to hell unless taken care of by the government.
Therefore this incident happened as a
result of a sequence of unrelated events that happen at the same time
as shown in the figure below. This doesn't mean that they are the
only events responsible for this incident. Their could be millions of
invisible events contributing to the occurence of the incident
either directly or indirectly as subevents but only a few are visible
and can be perceived by human mind.
Finally I wish to conclude saying
that an incident happens as a result of countless, unrelated chain of events
that occur at the same time, over which we might have very little
contol or sometimes no control at all. Many a time, we used to get a
feel that things are out of our hands and some external power is
controlling us and deciding our forture. But we fail to realize that
such external power were none other than the environment and people
surrounding us. Just think about it.
Think !!! Decide !!! Think different
!!!
