A Car Accident

Imagine yourself walking on the footpath, like a good responsible law abiding citizen, and suddenly a car comes and hits you out of nowhere. For next couple of months, you’re in the hospital, recuperating; and in the mean time also loosing that precious thing called time. MBAs will call it your lost opportunity cost; a more seasoned MBA will call it the cost of disease or accident. Anyhow, while you’re recuperating there in the hospital (or in your home), what do you think of the people who were driving that fateful car?

Let’s start with the simplest of scenarios and add on to complications as we progress.

In the most basic of cases, the car hits you and runs away. You never got to know the drivers, all you knew was that it “might” have been an honest mistake on their part, and you were just utterly hapless to be there – at the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, what if it wasn’t an “honest” mistake, rather, it was just a mistake, and the people who were driving were drunk and were having fun? Although, the accident which happened was unintentional, yet it could have been avoided had they been a little more responsible. Would you not curse them and feel that this should not go unpunished and that their karma should catch up to them?

Please note, that in any of these cases, the people sitting in the car were absolutely unharmed. Even their car had no superficial scratches whatsoever.

Now let’s say that the people sitting in the car did what they did intentionally. Being drunk or sober doesn’t really matter in this case. Although, as in the previous case, here too, the people sitting in the car are complete strangers to you. How would you feel about them now?

Finally, consider the case where the people sitting in the car did it knowing fully aware of what they were doing and why they were doing along with the fact that they were not complete strangers to you. These people knew you. Not just “knew you” knew you but they have known you for last 5-7 years, hanging out with you on a daily basis, getting involved in marathon carousing sessions with you, asking for your help as and when they required it; and you, being such a morally upright ass that you have been throughout your life, did whatever you could for them. In fact, when such an accident happened a couple of years ago to one of the people sitting in the car, you distinctly remember him saying that he wouldn’t hit anyone like this. And even earlier than that, you have been there for another such person who was also in that same car in a similar kind of situation. They were certainly more than friends with you. Or, you thought so.

The person who was driving the car was your girlfriend of four years and seven months. The person sitting next to her was your closest friend.

Oh, and instead of breaking your bones (which would have been far simpler to deal with), they broke your heart. Just like that, right there. Never visiting you in the hospital, because apparently…

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The Wall

He was lost. This was the first time he was travelling alone. He had had friends, but this time he didn’t want them to be around him. And anyway, he had been to these mountains before.

He was lost, though not technically. He had been trying to locate the place where the magic happened the last time he was here with people whom he doesn’t want to be here now. However, he was pretty sure that he was standing at the right place. Yet, something kept on insisting him to not to trust himself, anymore. He wasn’t really sure what it was, and there was no one to check with.

He was lost, again. After all these years, he now knew that he wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes, of trusting people the way he did. But sometimes, you don’t want to be logical. And clearly, there was no such thing as learning from past, for him, apparently. He took the wrong turn, and there it was, the dark green, overwhelmingly vertical mountain wall, with no pinnacle in sight, which seemed so near that if he extended his hands just a little bit, he could touch it. Only that, he can’t. Yes! This was the place the magic happened the last time he was here with people whom he doesn’t want to be there anymore.

He was lost, in hindsight. Sometimes he wished he shouldn’t have done the things he did. But then, who doesn’t? And he was also only human, may be more human than all the humans he had known. Or so, he’d like to think himself to be. Nevertheless, should that even matter?

Why then, was he lost?

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