8.43 am
It was friday and nothing unusual about the weather in Bangalore. It was
fairly sunny and clouds ocassionly hovering around , but no real signs of
rainfall.
On that day Saurabh, a working bachelor , woke up 10 mins late than usual .
One can blame for the movie that he had watched late the previous night. He
tried to hurry himself through a quick water shower which was relatively cold
and came out from bathroom with his teeth chattering as if a tuning fork was
set into action.Took the clothes off from the wardrobe and dressed himself up
and hurried downstairs.
He started the bike and the realization struck that he had left the ID card
, so went back and collected it.He wore the ID card around his neck , it was
the same ID that he has been wearing for two years designating the loyalty
towards his company that he loved to work for.
The small gap on his bike between the handle and the keylock had the sugar
prasadam that he had got from the visit to a nearby temple on eve of his
birthday , the previous evening. Sugar prasadam had magically attracted the
tiny red ants , these miniature beings of creation went unnoticed and saurabh
hastily started his 45min bike ride towards office. It was already 8.15 and was
15 minutes late than the uual time he used to leav.
At the same time when saurabh was taking bath , a Bangalore couple ,
staying roughly 4kms from saurabh's rented room , were in a fierce argument.
Mrs Rohini Sharma was yelling on top of her voice for the reason that her
husband had forgot to put off the washroom's light the previous midnight. The
reason of argument ,though silly ,is not the sole reason for fight , its the
work pressure that they have at their respective workplaces, adding salt to
injury.
It is hard to imagine that this is the same two people who ,5 years ago
went against the whim of their parents and prmoised to support each other for
the rest of their lives. Rohini's husband still sometimes feel agitated by the
thought that he had to settle down at a relatively earlier age , as is often
the case with the Indian love marriages , and couldn't stop comapraing himself
with his college friends who were about to be married by now and were already
drawing in heavily , studying and working abroad.
Also the thirst for career development and finnancial growth had blinded
them and had made them sideline the joy of parenting a child. Rohini,in a bad
mood, left home by her 12lakhs suv to
her office that day 10mins early without packing tiffin for her husband and the
clock had struck 8.15 by then.
Nearly 6kms away from Sharma's well furnished,anti-theft equipped house ,
Mr Rajaram Gokhale was jogging in the park. Mr Gokhale is 62 and a retired
physics professor , worked at university of Mumbai and had a keen taste for
philosophy , as is the case so often for ppl of that age. He and his wife had
rented out the flat at mumbai for sumtym and had come over to stay at his elder
son Satish's place who was blessed with a baby daughter a month ago. Satish ,
who like most ppl in Bangalore had securely locked his 30 years of service in
the IT box, is a parent of 2 kids. The elder is a son named Rohan studying in
2nd std.
These morning jogs for Mr Rajaram was meant to be pleasurable time to be
passed in fresh air and and the cool morning breeze. But the busy flowing
traffic and the constant honking of the vehicles on the road adjacent to the
park made the atmosphere for the joggers far from pleasant. The noise around
seemed to have found a way to penetrate his thoughts and often made them
useless.
Behind these thoughts , there was a question lying underneath which used to
sometime grab his soul and suck all the intersest and zeal out and rendered him
empty from within. It was this question for which Mr Rajaram had chosen to
pursue his career in Astrophysics at IIT Bombay 42 years ago. And inspite of a
long serving career and findings in this field he still couldnot satisfactorily
reason himsef "how universe came into existence??.." and "what
is it to be??". (Clock : 8.42am)He paused jogging and breathing heavily
bowed down , closing his eyes tightly as if he was peeking within his own soul
and pleading for an answer for those eternal questions to be spat out. But all
in vain, he resurfaced back to reality when he remembered he needed to
accompany his grandson Rohan to his school. These thought of Rajaram's resulted
in a delay of approx 3mins and the clock had struck 8.40am.
Meanwhile Rohan came running down the stairs with a usual goodbye kiss to
his mother before leaving for school. Gokhale's apartment was 15mtr away from
the park seperated by a road , which had a 180sec long signal beside it.
At 8.42 :
Rohan saw his grandpa on the other side of the park , where he seemed to have
bowed down tired from jogging . Rohan was a sharp kid and had learnt from
grandpa to take necessary precautions by having a good look at left and right
of the road before crossing over .So he crossed over halfway and stood over the
divider painted in the yellow and black stripes.Signal was stil red and 130
seconds away from green light.
Clock struck 8.43 , when the red ant attracted by the sugar , swirled
around the handle of Saurabh's bike and slipped itself through in between the
index and the middle finger of his left hand. Rohini's car was jus ahead of him
. She was feeling dejected with the path chosen to be more financially
sucessful rather than leading a lot simpler life where she could have been a
better wife and already a mother . With her eyes wet she felt dissapointed and
her head heavy , rested her forehead on the steering wheel.Her right feet was
soft on the accelerator.
Signal still had 80 seconds to go and Rohan thought of crossing over the
road , he moves his left leg forward . A sharp bite by the ant at the inside of
the index finger, accidentaly made Saurabh to press the horn , Rohini with her
eyes off from the road involuntarily stepped on the accelerator. And the next
moment .. THUG ... It was all over. Impact of the car was near Rohan's ribs and
he fell flat on head and that portion of road was painted red with the blood of
innocence.
