speed demon

Car horns blared and wheels screeched. If I had stopped I may have even smelt something that always put me off – rubber burning, or rather the smell of tyres when they aren’t built for speed. Mine were, fortunately.

Traffic was a bitch. It always was. And I wasn’t the chief minister or leader of the state’s opposition, or even some inane IAS officer or High Court judge. I was nobody. A common man, albeit married to the most brilliant woman in the world, with a mundane and monotonous job, and a lousy hatchback of a car.

Chennai roads were not built for speeding hatchbacks, even if they had Japanese tyres – potholes, people crossing on a whim, cows, bullock carts, stray dogs that think they’re Superman’s best friend and try to fly across in peak hour traffic, not to forget the millions of two-wheelers and auto rickshaws.

The roads definitely weren’t built for people dying either. Why the goddamn hospital had to be a billion miles away, I wouldn’t know. And the goddamn paramedics had even refused to let me in the ambulance so I had to jump into my trusty hatchback and follow. Sans the screaming siren and all. So people thought I was a freak and mostly didn’t allow me to pass.

The aforementioned brilliant wife was standing by the road, waiting for me to pick her up, when she crossed (the signal was red). Some bastard knocked her down. Right in front of my eyes. A massive 4WD with the ruling political party’s flag flapping away at the front, very proudly, knocked down my 26-year-old photographer wife, gorgeous and intelligent and carrying a shitload of equipment. If she wasn’t, she would have just caught a goddamn auto.

I cursed myself for not leaving office sooner to pick her up and cut through one more red light, screaming at the two-wheeler who tried to overtake me from my left. Moron.

I felt like I was having a panic attack when I saw the next red light. The ambulance managed to get ahead by as much as about 50 feet and I had to get to it. Stat. Of course, traffic wasn’t allowing me to. I turned off the nasal girl on the radio and put on some Pearl Jam and stepped on the accelerator. That was after I took a puff of my asthma medicine. Of course, I didn’t actually have asthma. I just smoked too much and kept it with me in case of emergencies. Like this.

I got to my wife after a couple of minutes. I knocked down a girl on a bicycle in the process, but it was her fault. Women are gorgeous and smart, but they can’t drive to save their lives and they should bloody accept the fact.

It had been 27 minutes already. Twenty seven long minutes since that white monster of a car had knocked her down. And I had no idea what shape she was in. I saw the hospital on the horizon and somehow, I didn’t feel any relief. I think I knew she was already gone. Maybe she was never mine to begin with. I always wondered what she saw in a poor sod like me.

**********

The boys had been glued to their gaming console since early evening, but hunger made them look up around dinner time.

“Where the hell is Samir, dude? I’m hungry. Is he getting pepperoni or chicken bbq?”

“No idea. Both will do. I may even eat mushrooms now, I’m so fucking hungry.”

“He’ll be here soon. He was stuck at office.”

The first guy looks up. “Office? Shit, that’s in fricking another state, dude. He’ll take another hour at least.”

Boy number two groans, but the third interrupts. “Chill, man. The psycho will be here soon.”

“How do you know?? Have you ever driven on that route at 7pm?”

“You know that strange psycho-ass trick he has of following ambulances and pretending he’s the son or whatever of the person inside? He’s probably doing that. He texted earlier saying he’d be here in 20. So shut up and wait.”