“Mom , Why can’t our car move ?”, said Rahul . “An accident has occurred on the road , people say a lady was brought down by a speeding car , while she was frantically running towards a man who is thought to be the lady’s love. So, the road is blocked and we have to wait till we are allowed to move”, said his beloved mother. Rahul thought , “How idiotic is this , for this incident I will have to miss Popeye , pfffff”. The six year old child unable to understand the complicacies of the heart , rearranged himself on the car’s seat and started shifting the pages of tinkle comics.


There was blood all over , it was crimson red , the red hue had spread all over the place .The man held her in his arms , her deformed blood bathed face was hidden by his arms, her black hair the symbol of her beauty at one time had reduced to shreds . If a poet would have seen it he would have surely compared it with the sight of the red setting sun and the symbolism would also have been equally true but alas ! there was no poet who could glorify this picturesque scene. Her legs were smashed , her body was reduced to a cadaver but the most important thing that one could have noticed was that the man was neither leaving her deformed cadaver nor letting the police do its duty .He was not crying , he was not howling , he was a man , manly enough and that is the reason may be God had other plans for him. To, the bishop the plan would be to give him enough sadness so that he cherishes happiness , bathe his soul and then use him in God’s work . Bishop was the so called closest to God , so may be he was right .Who knows ??? The man had to leave his lover finally, while the six year old reached just in time to watch his favorite cartoon show Popeye.


The boy was 14 now, old enough mentally to understand most of the emotional delicacies that the world would show. He was in the car , going to school with his mother seated on the opposite side. He was stuck in one of those disgusting road blockages again , but this time the boy didn’t ask his mother about the reason of their being stuck .He just zoomed his eye lenses and saw that the police was raiding the slums present in those areas and bringing them down. This view and his mental maturity allowed him to understand that he would not be able to reach the school in time and would be punished .This thought extracted a frown from his face .He rearranged himself , settled down in the car and gazed at his physics book This time his mother was a silent observer.


The scene was unnecessarily bloodied , heads of the people had been busted by the police lathis .The people were not at all ready to leave their makeshift house because they would be homeless but for the sake of the construction of monorails it was very necessary to clear the slums .The government was indignant and stubborn on this issue and the weak , feeble slum dwellers would never stand a chance .If a rationalist would have seen the happenings he would have remarked , “It is the natural habit of people to cling to what they have thus , even a makeshift property on falsely acquired land would mean to them as same as a royal palace on their own property. So , the government should try to make permanent solutions to their housing problem” but alas ! he was not present ,neither was the media there to listen to his remarks and print it in the daily the next day. Red was the eminent color in this context too. Reddish hue had overlapped all the commotion , what if the poet was here how would he react to this , would he compare it with redness of the setting sun or would he compare it to the redness of the rose .The rose , its redness , the color of its petals, those petals which can only be felt after one moves his fingers up its thorned strait. In twenty minutes the whole place was evacuated but a wizened man even on receiving fatal blows refused to leave his dwelling. His courage , his stubborn attitude was akin to that of the hero of the “Humane” cinema but alas ! in this case the hero had to retreat while in the movie the Hero was matchless. The blockage cleared and rahul reached school in good health and good time while the slum dwellers had to satisfy themselves with expired medicines lend by the hospital.


Rahul walks down the car , his mother is no more in his opposite seat .He has grown up to be a twenty two year old lad with emotional attachments. He is now a intern doctor in a medical college .His car rests outside the college door while he enters the college with pride , the pride of both his parents and his beloved Isah (the girl he loves) .He reaches the outdoor of the hospital , ignores the irritating , chatter of the patients and their family members .While passing through the outdoor , he sees almost sixty people lying .Some having their family members to support them some having god with them . He knows very few will survive , while passing through the left turn of the emergency unit he sees a deformed body blood bathed all over , surrounded by ward boys who are taking it to the operation theatre and after adding a few paces to his journey he sees an old man having swellings on his body which were supposedly generated by the lathi blows. He rushes to the room of the senior doctor under whom Rahul works . “Rahul , why are you late , come to the O.T. immediately”. He rushes in , changes his clothes , wears the gloves , takes the surgical instruments and does the operation while his senior goes on instructing him. The operation ends ,the red color of blood dominates again but this time the patient lives .The doctors call it a miracle , Rahul earns accolades .Few days later he sees the patients boyfriend there with her in the hospital’s general ward who tells him about the human error of drunken driving which had caused this and opposite to her bed was the old man , he too was recovering rapidly.

What about the victims of human errors when rahul was small , did they survive ? They did thinks the poet , They should not have thinks the Bishop , The question of survival is out of any contention thinks the rationalist. Rahul walks out of the hospital , steps in the car , the car moves and stops after a while .Unaware of the questions and the probable answers , rahul starts gazing at the Outlook magazine kept on his car’s seat while the shouts of “We need justice” hits his cars tinted window panes.


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Meanings::: lathi - cane(object to hit with).