Another road trip. Another accident victim.
On National Highway 8 connecting Rajasthan with Gurgaon, traffic was moving at 100 kmph or more. Two kilometers after Kotputli, we see something sprawled across the middle lane of the three lane highway. A few people had gathered by the side of the road, observing from afar.
As we crossed the being/object, the kids took a closer look. "That was definitely a person dad. Not an animal." I stop the car, tell the kids to stay put, and walk back to investigate. Indeed, this was a naked person lying face down in his own blood.
Traffic was whizzing past me as I stood there, looking at him. The sight of blood has always made me queasy. Viewing the innards of other people makes me very sick. Some people moved to stand beside me. They conjectured he was drunk. Or dead. Or both.
"We have to move him to the side", I said.
I am not a lawyer. I do not know if it is a crime to disturb a dead body in the middle of a highway. But I wasn't going to leave it there and call the cops. By the time the cops got there, it would have been run over, creating a greater disturbance of the crime scene than me moving him to the side. Besides, he could be alive.
"He is breathing", observed someone. "Excellent. Let's move him to the side then?" No one budged, so I grabbed a shoulder and heaved. Others reluctantly joined in, and we carried him to the side of the road. Then we rolled him over onto his back. Someone found his dhoti and covered his privates.
"We should call an ambulance", one person suggested. I told him that he is welcome to try, but I don't except anything to show up. I tried calling 100, but Airtel didn't connect me. (I suppose I needed to prepend the local STD code. This is a huge breakage in our emergency response system. I should figure out how to call the cops when in an emergency.)
I started convincing people to just load him into the backseat of my car. They kept insisting that we should wait for the ambulance and cops. There was a tradeoff here between time lost, and possible injuries from using a car instead of an ambulance to transport him. I did have an inflatable mattress covering the entire backseat.
While we were debating, standing a few meters from the person, a crowd had gathered. Between 50 and 100 people, crowding over him, speaking loudly. Everyone had a theory, but no one was really willing to do anything for him. The American term for this, rubbernecking, does not begin to cover how we Indians (South Asians?) behave at the scene of an accident. We are tamaashbeens.
Something had to be done. The guy needed air. I channeled all the rage and fury I could find inside me and bellowed at the crowd, waving my hands to clear them away. After three roars, the crowd had melted down to the few who meant business. I told them to hold fort while I went to get my car so we could transport this guy.
I had just turned my car into the service lane when I saw an ambulance arrive. Excellent response time (for India). The guy was loaded into the ambulance and I followed the vehicle to the Kotputli hospital.
Turns out I didn't have to. Rajasthan seems to have this excellent emergency response system called 108. The first I'd heard of 108 was in Karnataka. In Rajasthan, it clearly works. By the time I reached the hospital, the guy was inside the dedicated trauma center, and five to six folks were already working on him. Some apparatus had been shoved down his throat, and he was being stiched up at different places. There was a dedicated manager who told me not to be worried, and that the patient would be taken care of. His family members had already been informed.
I chatted with the manager. I told him my experience with government hospitals has always been rather poor. They take ages to start attending to a trauma victim. Usually some medicine has to be purchased, blood donated, or the wheels of sarkar turned in other ways. He assured me things were different here. I asked to leave my number, in case the police wanted information about the condition that the person was found in. He told me that this would not be needed. So we left.
Moral of the story: if you're going to be in a road accident, make sure it's close to a small town in Rajasthan. You will survive to tell your tale.
PS: We Indians tend not to help accident victims. I don't know if this is just us as a people, or conditioning due to the way cops treated "good samaritans" back in the day. Almost eighteen years ago, I was out with Bhaskar Deol in Chennai when he stopped and helped an accident victim. I was shocked; I could not believe someone would "get involved" in a road accident. He spent hours, ran around, saw the whole thing through. The cops did not hassle us after. Since then, I've always stopped for accident victims. Next time you see an accident victim, do stop and help. There is no reason why you shouldn't.
On National Highway 8 connecting Rajasthan with Gurgaon, traffic was moving at 100 kmph or more. Two kilometers after Kotputli, we see something sprawled across the middle lane of the three lane highway. A few people had gathered by the side of the road, observing from afar.
As we crossed the being/object, the kids took a closer look. "That was definitely a person dad. Not an animal." I stop the car, tell the kids to stay put, and walk back to investigate. Indeed, this was a naked person lying face down in his own blood.
Traffic was whizzing past me as I stood there, looking at him. The sight of blood has always made me queasy. Viewing the innards of other people makes me very sick. Some people moved to stand beside me. They conjectured he was drunk. Or dead. Or both.
"We have to move him to the side", I said.
I am not a lawyer. I do not know if it is a crime to disturb a dead body in the middle of a highway. But I wasn't going to leave it there and call the cops. By the time the cops got there, it would have been run over, creating a greater disturbance of the crime scene than me moving him to the side. Besides, he could be alive.
"He is breathing", observed someone. "Excellent. Let's move him to the side then?" No one budged, so I grabbed a shoulder and heaved. Others reluctantly joined in, and we carried him to the side of the road. Then we rolled him over onto his back. Someone found his dhoti and covered his privates.
"We should call an ambulance", one person suggested. I told him that he is welcome to try, but I don't except anything to show up. I tried calling 100, but Airtel didn't connect me. (I suppose I needed to prepend the local STD code. This is a huge breakage in our emergency response system. I should figure out how to call the cops when in an emergency.)
I started convincing people to just load him into the backseat of my car. They kept insisting that we should wait for the ambulance and cops. There was a tradeoff here between time lost, and possible injuries from using a car instead of an ambulance to transport him. I did have an inflatable mattress covering the entire backseat.
While we were debating, standing a few meters from the person, a crowd had gathered. Between 50 and 100 people, crowding over him, speaking loudly. Everyone had a theory, but no one was really willing to do anything for him. The American term for this, rubbernecking, does not begin to cover how we Indians (South Asians?) behave at the scene of an accident. We are tamaashbeens.
Something had to be done. The guy needed air. I channeled all the rage and fury I could find inside me and bellowed at the crowd, waving my hands to clear them away. After three roars, the crowd had melted down to the few who meant business. I told them to hold fort while I went to get my car so we could transport this guy.
I had just turned my car into the service lane when I saw an ambulance arrive. Excellent response time (for India). The guy was loaded into the ambulance and I followed the vehicle to the Kotputli hospital.
Turns out I didn't have to. Rajasthan seems to have this excellent emergency response system called 108. The first I'd heard of 108 was in Karnataka. In Rajasthan, it clearly works. By the time I reached the hospital, the guy was inside the dedicated trauma center, and five to six folks were already working on him. Some apparatus had been shoved down his throat, and he was being stiched up at different places. There was a dedicated manager who told me not to be worried, and that the patient would be taken care of. His family members had already been informed.
I chatted with the manager. I told him my experience with government hospitals has always been rather poor. They take ages to start attending to a trauma victim. Usually some medicine has to be purchased, blood donated, or the wheels of sarkar turned in other ways. He assured me things were different here. I asked to leave my number, in case the police wanted information about the condition that the person was found in. He told me that this would not be needed. So we left.
Moral of the story: if you're going to be in a road accident, make sure it's close to a small town in Rajasthan. You will survive to tell your tale.
PS: We Indians tend not to help accident victims. I don't know if this is just us as a people, or conditioning due to the way cops treated "good samaritans" back in the day. Almost eighteen years ago, I was out with Bhaskar Deol in Chennai when he stopped and helped an accident victim. I was shocked; I could not believe someone would "get involved" in a road accident. He spent hours, ran around, saw the whole thing through. The cops did not hassle us after. Since then, I've always stopped for accident victims. Next time you see an accident victim, do stop and help. There is no reason why you shouldn't.