Thursday, January 27: Accident Dispatch

You haven't heard from me in a little while, and you have had cause to worry. In the past three days I have been pushed down by a bicycle, a bus, and a dog. This road between Triruchirappalli (Trichy) and Maduri is hell. The buses and trucks ignore anything smaller than a car, causing us -- motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians -- to flee the road for the relative safety of the dirt shoulder.

The bus pushed me down while I was sitting at a full stop in a traffic jam. He decided to ignore my existence and swung the front of the vehicle around in front of me. The back of the bus simply nudged me over. I had nowhere to go but down, and down I went into a sloping sandy bank. Unhurt except for pride, I dusted myself off, got help righting the bike, and went on my way, just a little wiser. (The "crash bar" on the bike protected the tank, handlebars, etc., from being dented.)

A few hours later I met with my next incident. Two boys on the bicycle were riding steadily down the shoulder of the wrong side of the road, as is common here. The driver was about 14 and the passenger, sitting sidesaddle and wriggling violently, was around 10 years old. I'd slowed nearly to a stop because of them and because there was a blind curve ahead of me and I didn't see an out in case a truck or bus decided to take the entire road, which they tend to do more often than not. I guess I was going around 10 km/hr when the boys lurched across the road and hit my front wheel. I'm conjecturing that he just lost control and came falling in my direction. I was nearly at a full stop by the time they hit me, but that didn't prevent me from slowly falling over into an old man. He'd been walking down the shoulder with his hands behind his back, probably contemplating lunch. Seconds later we were both contemplating our shin scrapes and cursing the boys, who had picked up the bike and fled. The villagers were furious. Boys on bicycles seem to be responsible for many of the accidents here.

The road was notorious, said the cop who directed me to the old Maduri highway, a scenic route only used by villagers now. So the third accident was my own fault. I'd relaxed and was enjoying the ambiance of water buffalo and rice fields, thatched huts, small brown monkeys swinging on the branches over the trees, oxen carts carrying sugar cane and hay, and vendors selling green coconuts and bananas. I was attentive on the curved road, watching everything, but I'd learned that dogs and monkeys are nothing to worry about. They're much more attentive to traffic than the goats, chickens, cows, and even the people who walk into the road without any warning. So I didn't even slow down when I saw the dog trotting down the shoulder ahead of me. He looked attentive. I was actually smiling, enjoying the scenery and the cool shady road, and the reliable thump thump of the engine, going about 60km/ 40mph. And then the dog jumped in front of me, like a suicide. Blam. I rolled, my helmet made a loud noise against the hard surface three or four times. I felt dizzy, and then I was surrounded by people, all yelling.

I took off my helmet and someone threw water in my face. I said I was okay and somebody else threw water in my face. I raised myself up on one elbow and water was thrown in my face yet a third time. My eyes were open by then, and it hurt. "Stop it!" I yelled. I'm okay! I'm okay!

It was the Jesus Loves You people from a green van I'd passed several kilometers before, full of white clad Indians spreading the word of the single Christian God in the land of the many Hindu gods. "Can you walk?" someone said, and started to pull me up. "No! No! Jut let me lie here for a moment." I counted scrapes on my wrists, shoulders, and hip. My knee felt wet, so I guessed there was a whopper of a scrape there, too. But I wasn't hurt. Nope. Not until I stood up and the literal fountain of blood spurted out of a hole in my jeans.

Slightly shaken, I gave the key to the motorcycle to somebody who followed us to the clinic the Jesus Loves You van. Before the doors closed a colorfully dressed Indian woman from another car insisted upon blessing me in Hindu style. She touched my leg and bowed her head and murmured something. Then she touched my heart and looked into my eyes. Her forehead was decorated with the round marriage dot and a swipe ash, gold and red from the morning's puja. "You will be okay," she said, and folded her hands in namaste, and the doors were shut. The nearest town was about 10 minutes away, an hour north of Maduri. "Are you a Christian?" asked the missionaries. "Yes," I said, and they were happy. I remembered the missionaries in Guinea Bissau when I was there in 1993. They helped me through a nasty bout of malaria, and I was grateful for their presence, their grace, and their expertise in handling difficult situations. Soon we arrived at a rough country clinic where two busy doctors were bustling around and obviously not happy at the commotion caused by my arrival. I sat on a dusty table, got a shot of anesthesia and three quick stitches. I could see the flesh poking out between, but there was nothing else to do.

I thought that the missionaries had gone on their way, but they returned to tell me that they'd engaged a mechanic nearby to take care of Patience. I insisted upon giving them a donation for the cause, which they very reluctantly accepted ("but we are missionaries!" exclaimed one of the women). The mechanic met me outside the clinic. He had deemed Patience fit and ready for the road. The crash bar had done its job, and it looked like only the clutch lever and the back left pannier were damaged. He would ride me into Maduri and take the bus back. Really, it was the most humiliating hour of my entire motorcycling career. I really can't stand riding pillion, and now I was gun-shy about these roads, too. My leg was aching and wouldn't bend properly. And who knew what kind of driver he was? But India is trying to teach me patience and trust, and besides, what else was there to do but go along and try to learn from him. And I did learn. He beeped at everything. Every car, every bike, every cow and dog. When he hadn't beeped in a while he beeped just because he hadn't beeped in a while. When we went through a town he beeped continuously, until we were out of the town again. I just sat on the back, tense and in rather a lot of pain, and kicking myself. I haven't had a motorcycle accident since I was 14 and immortal, bouncing through the trees in the North Carolina woods. At 41 I am not fond of bouncing and I am definitely not feeling immortal.

Today at Bose hospital in Maduri I traded the three stitches for about 10. The stitches began about an inch deep into the flesh just above my kneecap. "Not serious," said the doctor as he squirted antiseptic into the wound. "It actually just missed the knee joint." I grimaced as he poked away. I felt a disturbing pressure, but no real pain. "It's actually curved around away from the kneecap, about one and a half inches deep into your flesh, like a hook," he told me, fascinated. Nurses in wispy sky-blue saris collected bloody gauze and handed over instruments, and the barefoot sweeper in navy shorts and shirt open to his navel kept the floor clean and made strange faces at me. The doctor snapped his rubber gloves and stitched away, chatting about the history of Maduri's temple and the fact that the bus stations here have the same names as their locations over three thousand years ago. I tried to appreciate all the information, but was having a difficult time of it. The hospital light was rusty, there was no sheet under me on the table and my underwear was getting soaked from the antiseptic running from my knee. Nobody was wearing surgical masks, and the power cut out twice. Another patient walked in during the operation to get her cast cut off by one of the nurses. Another doctor was treating my road rash, but everyone was horrified that I wanted to take my shirt off so that they he could disinfect the scrape on my shoulder. He peeked at it quickly, as the nurses looked aghast. It went untreated.

"You'll take rest for three days, and then you can continue your journey," said the surgeon, as he wrapped my knee in gauze. I couldn't believe my luck. Only three days.

In the News

New Indian Express, Madurai

ROGUE BUS INJURES 21 [Pardon my current fascination with accidents.] Twenty persons were injured when an MTC bus ran out of control, rammed into a moped before falling off the Maraimalai Bridge... John Justin, the two-wheeler driver, who was said to have been killed in the accident, has miraculously survived. Apollo Hospital sources said Justin was brought to the hospital when he was about to die. He was given immediate attention and saved. Justin, now in a critical state, is undergoing a major operation. Justin's wife, Sheela, who suffered injuries, is anxiously waiting at the hospital.

LEPROSY PATIENTS NEED A HELPING HAND [Leprosy seems to be everywhere in India, beggars with scarred hands and faces, missing noses and fingers...] The privileged class of Indian society is not yet ready to accept a leprosy patient as "yet another patient", Tirunelveli CSI Diocese Bishop Rt. Rev. Jeyapaul David has lamented... Thanks to the researches in this field in US and elsewhere in the world now the treatment for leprosy was available everywhere. But the basic mentality of people had not yet changed yet. Leprosy patients were even now considered untouchables and they were kept away from the mainstream of life. Lack of "proper awareness" was one of the reasons for this ostracism towards leprosy patients. People even had reservation in purchasing products prepared by them. This sort of mentality should change, he felt...

INDIA DOES NOT NEED VIAGRA Sale of Viagra, the best-selling Pfizer potency-pill for men, should not be encouraged in India, already groaning under a population explosion, says a Danish population researcher... "With the problem of growing population that countries like India face and their very uphill battle against it, easy available of Viagra would be like feeding inflammable fuel to fire," Jensen told IANS. "I do not mean that without Viagra the same men cannot produce children. But granted the ways of nature, when lust is lacking the incentive for procreation is commensurately diminished...." "Jensen said it was not his intention to dampen the enthusiasm of Indian men seeking increased virility, but indiscriminate available of Viagra is bound to create an undesirable tide in population.

DEGRADATION OF TIRUVANNAMALAI: EXPERT BODY MOOTS SEPARATE PATH FOR PILGRIMS [This is one of the temples I visited, at the foot of a sacred mountain called Arunachala -- the Ramanashram is also located there, where I met the Slovanian woman and the wandering sadu] An expert body constituted by the Madras High Court to look into the preservation of Tiruvannamalai town and 'Giripradikshina Salai' has mooted a separate foot path for pilgrims who throng the town on festive days... Constituted following a spate of writ petitions filed in the Madras High Court to safeguard the ecological, historical and religious heritage of the Hill, the expert panel suggested the formation of an outer by-pass ring road from the railway level crossing... to reduce the congestion in the town...

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