It’s better to be late than never.

It was 24^th of December 2009. I was studying in my 1^st semester of B.Tech Computer Science. Exams were to begin from 28^th of December. As usual, I had prepared nothing for the upcoming exams. It was afternoon, when I went to my cousin’s house, who too was a student of same college as I was, to discuss about the upcoming exams. I met Amit and the discussion started. Soon, the discussion was drifted to the topic of Aamir Khan’s new movie, which was to be released on 25^th of December. Aamir was to release a movie after a year long gap, so the movie was quite an anticipated one. Therefore it was obvious that the movie must be houseful at least in its first week of release. The movie had some premier shows too at some selected venues. The concept of premier shows was new to Lucknow in 2009, so not everyone in Lucknow knew about it. I asked my cousin if he wants to go out with me for watching the movie. To this he said that the shows must be houseful. I said lets go out and see whether the tickets of the premier show were available. We then went to Inox on my bike. Hopefully the tickets were available. We bought 2 tickets and then headed back to our respective homes. It was then decided that we would meet at my place at about half an hour before the show begins.

I took a light shower, poured some deodorant on myself wore clothes and was ready to leave. I told my mother that I am going out to study at my cousin’s house and will be a little late. Similarly, my cousin gave the same excuse, the only change being the venue of study that was my home in his case. I called my cousin half an hour before the show was to begin and ‘sir’ was in bathroom. Finally, he arrived 15 minutes before the show timing and handed over the keys of his new bike and asked me to drive and told me that he didn’t want to be even a minute late to the movie show. I told him that it’s his bike, his hands are set and he should drive but then he said, he is a bit tired. So, without wasting much time I sat on his bike and we drove-off.

His bike’s 4 stroke single cylinder 150 cc. air cooled OHC engine was responding well to my handling of the accelerator throttle. The bike’s speed was gradually increasing and it touched 100 km/hr as we moved from the road adjacent to the Governor House towards Lohiya Path. We were moving behind a Maruti car which too was speeding-away at about 105 km/hr. The forward view was totally blocked. I moved towards the right to overtake the car. My speed was 109 km/hr. The moment I moved right I saw two 6 by 6 ft. barricading with no space in between them, 10-20 mt. away from us. I applied both the front disk and the rear drum breaks as hard as I could but the distance was too less to stop the bike at such a speed. I was not wearing the helmet. I struck head-on to the barricading.

I have been a resident of Lucknow for over 23 years but I have never seen a barricading on that high-way road apart from 24^th December 2009. The accident seemed to have been engineered for us. My right eye was swollen badly. My cousin had little pain in his left hand but he was fine. He checked my vision by asking how many fingers I see. It was fine. Even after such an accident our spirit was on the higher side. At one moment I even proposed to watch the movie and then call home but then we decided not to act smart and let’s call home. Soon the help arrived. I was first taken away for an eye check-up, it was fine, and I read all the characters properly. Then I was admitted to the hospital for X-rays, CT-scan, etc. I had two fractured bones just above the right eye. It was to be operated and my exams were to begin from 28^th of December. It was almost confirmed that I won’t be able to write the exams.

The neurosurgeon  told that my head was first to be shaved, then will be hammered to break the skull for a vent from where they will lift the broken bone to right position and then stitch back. My mother went crazy after listening to this scary process. Then we contacted some more neurosurgeons and also plastic-surgeon and orthopedic surgeon too, to take their opinion on this case. The head surgery could be done by anyone of these. It was the plastic-surgeon, Dr. Himanshu of S.I.P.S., Lucknow who gave the right opinion. He said that the bone will automatically settle down. The operation is only for the sake of looking alright and having no marks on face. The only ill effect of the broken bone was to make the concerned sinus narrower. So, we decided, not to go for operation and once the swelling was gone there was little or no mark left on my face.

During all this process I didn’t had time to even touch my books. I reached my home just an evening before the actual exam date. So all I had was few hours to study and it was Engineering Mathematics-I exam. I managed to study the concepts of last year’s paper and I secured 59/100 in the mathematics paper and 71.8% in semesters.

Though I managed to come out of this difficult situation but it could have been avoided if I hadn’t cared for reaching the theatre on time. Therefore it’s always ‘better to be late than never.’