Prithvi... [Vol 5]

Chapter 137

The small girl in the faded blue frock brightened up on spotting a brown puppy on the other side of the road. She pulled her hand out of the clasp of her older sister's fingers, and gleefully ran across the road.

Her sister along with the people on both sides of the street froze in shock.

The approaching vehicle was so close that it seemed inevitable that the child would be crushed under it.

There was a loud screech. 

The onlookers stared in shock, unable to believe their eyes. 

The SUV had managed to halt a few inches away from the child. And though the little girl had frozen with fear, she was very much alive and physically fine. Then collective sighs and murmurs of relief were heard. The older girl rushed to the road and dragged the tiny tot away, plainly afraid that she was going to be scolded by strangers for not being more alert with her mischievous and hyperactive sister.

Everything had stilled for a moment. Now life returned to the scene, and the witnesses of the near-tragedy gradually continued on their way, marvelling over the child's good fortune and the driving skills of the man behind the wheel.

Stunned by the near accident, Prithvi remained motionless for some seconds, then the impatient horn of a vehicle behind him roused him. He restarted the SUV and drove numbly for a short while, then pulled over to the roadside and brought the vehicle to a stop. He sat immobile for some time, thinking hard about what had just happened.

The numerous close brushes with death he'd had while driving on narrow, broken roads in the hills had not ruffled him once. But the moment he'd thought he had taken a life...

He'd not had time to swerve. And if his reaction had been slower by a second, the child would have been dead on the road. He'd only had an infinitesimal second to react, and for that moment, he had believed that he had killed the child. He'd actually been stunned to see the child still standing, frightened but alive...

Prithvi subdued the shock and the sickening guilt. He needed to evaluate the incident again with a calm, wholly impartial view to know for certain if he had been at fault, and if there was anything he could have done differently to have avoided putting the child at risk.

He thoughts shifted from the immediate moments preceding the near disaster to the savagery of the mindset with which he had strode out of Vrindavan some time ago. Had he missed seeing the child because of his inner state...

But irrespective of how many times he replayed the moments with a brutal clarity, he reached the same conclusion. That there had been no warning at all until the girl dashed onto the road, and he wouldn't have been prepared for the incident even if he had been driving in the most serene mood.

The unthinkable catastrophe had been averted only because of sheer luck.

But what if there had been time to stop, and he'd failed to do so because he'd been too mired in toxic emotions to realise what was happening, and if luck had not played its role? 

Prithvi shuddered to think of what could have happened.

For many years now, regardless of what he was going through on the inside, he had not allowed it to spill into the outside world through word or deed. And he had not had to exert any effort to focus on the surroundings and fulfill his duties and responsibilities even when he'd been breaking internally. The clean, rigid segregation of his inner and outer lives had come naturally to him from the start, and it had only become easier over the years.

But hadn't he been struggling with the same thing since his arrival in Shamli. What if this had been the day when he'd allowed some useless ghosts from the past to interfere with his concentration on the road, and an innocent life had been lost as a result...