This is an incident that happened with us in October of 2017.
It so happened after my sister in law Jo’s husband untimely passed away. Ash and I had lost interest in celebrating the Diwali festivities. So that year was a minuscule affair. I was not in the mood because I missed J (Jo’s hubby). J was a guy in mid-fifties who worked as an ad executive for a local newspaper and both J and Jo were a lovely couple who cared for us.
That year, Ash and I decided to ditch the celebrations and rather visit the beachside. We were looking at some downtime that year with our then 7-year-old boy. I get a little queasy up the mountains, so we finalized a sleepy beach town that was closer to home - Dive Agar.
The road to Dive Agar from home went through smaller towns of Mulshi, Tamhini, Mangaon and then through the winding roads of Konkan. It’s hilly terrain with sharp hairpin bends and roads that are way narrow to drive a car. We took our meals and around 2 pm left the home and estimated that by 6 or 7 pm in the evening we would be in Dive Agar. We were driving our old white corolla, had bought it in 2009 as a used car. And it was not in its best shape. It’s clutch pads needed to be continuously replaced. We had our other car but Ash insisted that we take the old Corolla with us, just to keep it running.
The road to Tamhini was perfect. Mulshi was a fresh breath of air. We started descending through Tamhini ghat (ghats in India rarely have walls or fences built up). There was, of course, the usual vehicular traffic as it was a Diwali week. We crossed Vilebhagad industrial area and reached Mangaon around 5 pm. We should have reached earlier but Google maps in India at that time was another story. Mangaon is a rural town in Konkan. It’s a taluka place, a small town with a busy bazaar area, run of the mill hotels, roads that have not been swept for ages, etc. you get the idea I hope.
We were hungry and thought of taking a break but the daunting task of driving for the next 3 hours didn’t let us. I fed my boy with snacks that I had brought from home. We decided to not waste time and get started on the second leg of our journey. Our car was already giving in with the slightly burnt smell of the clutch pads and the overheated engine. The sun was setting down. Konkan villages, hutments, and Vadis dotted the sprawling landscape. The air was grim. Not cold, neither hot with very little wind. The roads were intertwined and it took great skill to drive along those in minimal lighting of the car headlights. Between villages were tracts of dense forests. Surprisingly not many cars on the road. We were hitting a car after a 5 km span. Our cell batteries were getting exhausted. We had a car charger that we used intermittently. We were kind of getting frustrated with the situation and were almost at the end of our patience with endless pestering questions from our otherwise lovely son about when we would reach the beach or take a break or have dinner etc.
At an unfortunate moment in this grim climate, our car broke down. Smoke erupted from the car bonnet and it just stopped with a loud thud. We cussed ourselves and fought the way husbands and wives do in such situations. The car was right in the middle of the road. The car that I usually admired for all its fancy features was the one that I hated at that moment. I had read somewhere that you should not be sitting in a broke down car, lest some other vehicle hit you from behind. It is at these moments, that I usually imagine the worst and immediately pass my anxieties on my fellow passengers. Now that is something that irritates them even more. Now you know why you should never ask me to be your co-traveler. Ash got mad at me when I expressed this, but he being the head of our tiny 3 person group didn’t want to leave the car. And I being the independent woman, was in no mood to be the dutiful wife. So I perched down from the car with my boy in tow and stood at a distance from our car. I showed some presence of mind and surrounded our car with stones on all sides, like the way broken trucks do. Still not in the best of my demeanor, I waited patiently on the side of the road.
Around 20 minutes passed like this. It started becoming pitch dark. Not a soul on the road. Critters and mosquitoes were our only friends at this moment. They were feasting on us. Ash was still attempting to revive the car. The cell battery had completely discharged from either our phones.
A thought came to our minds that maybe we should walk up to the closest village, but that was something we’re were absolutely not prepared for, especially with a kid. Ash and I had never in our life imagined that we could ever be stuck up like this. I mean how bad could it be? Time was our enemy. Tick tick, not a human in sight for another half an hour.
With Gods grace (and after this incident I more so believed), a bike approached us with two men. They told us that the next village was like 5 kms away and that they would drive into the village and see if they can bring in a tow truck and a mechanic. They left and I started praying like a fanatic. Hope! Hope that they get back, hope that they get a tow truck, hope that we get the hell out of this situation.
The almighty answered our prayers. The neighboring village was I guess moslem dominant. Around 10-15 guys approached us to help. They bought in a mechanic and a driver with a tow truck. The mechanic, a wriggly little guy from Bihar, said we were lucky to have survived. The clutch pads were completely worn off. He was super nice to my boy. I guessed he thought of his family back home. The tow truck driver was a big guy. He was super helpful to us. The entire exercise of towing down our Corolla back to Mangaon took like 2 hours. We would have been nowhere today had those guys not helped us.
Through this blog, would like to thank all those who helped us on that fateful night. Finally we checked into a dingy hotel, thanked the team profusely and just dozed off. The beach vacation was now in dreams.
For additional interest, you can view the location map of the village here Sai, Maharashtra 402122, India
https://goo.gl/maps/VNn15dTneXpmBDPZA
Source: http://meenalkulkarni.blogspot.com/
By
Meenal Kulkarni
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