Mumbai taxis; courtesy Tom Spender
THIS post is a tribute to all those who lost their lives in senseless traffic accidents, in Mumbai, in New York, on any street anywhere in the world where a driver is speeding, perhaps under the influence of alcohol, drugs, or text message, perhaps for no reason at all, and hits a person, or two, or another car, and a body hits the pavement, and it’s too late to do anything but call for the ambulance, which in peak traffic time can take too long to arrive, so the crowd of bystanders puts the injured person in a cab and rushes him off to the closest hospital, and the cops arrive on the scene, and the driver who so unthinkingly hurtled down that street just minutes before is now shaken and shivering and looking at a life forever changed and marked, and the person bleeding his life away on the pockmarked road wasn’t doing anything different, just crossing the road like every other day of his life, and perhaps he wasn’t paying as much attention as he should, just like the driver, but he didn’t think that would mean he would end up dead, and his wife widowed and his children orphaned, all because he didn’t think to look left and right before crossing the street, and the driver didn’t think he’d actually hit anyone, because of course he has perfect control of the car and sometimes he sped up a little when he was in a hurry but he had never hurt anyone before and how had this happened in a split second, and that little girl who was in the car that passed on the other side, she shrieked and held her hands over her eyes, but she will never forget that thud as the body hit the ground, and the way the hood of the car is now misshapen, and the horrible tangle of limbs that shows that they are broken. Continue reading
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