MIRACLE

It was the summer of 1990. I and my family were holidaying at my sister-in-law’s home in Agra. The days were extremely hot confining all of us to the four walls of the house. We would have an occasional trip late evening to the local market for some shopping or enjoying the famous ‘chaat’ of Agra or a visit to the Taj Mahal to have a glimpse in moonlight. 

My brother-in-law, Shishir, who was also with us, suggested that we go to Mount Abu for a week to beat the heat.  Mount Abu is a small hill station in Rajasthan, around 700 kms from Agra. Total driving time by road is around 12 hours which includes brief stopovers at Jaipur and Ajmer.

Once the program was finalized, we left Agra early morning, the next day. The first leg of the journey was to Jaipur. The journey from Agra to Jaipur was very pleasant. The road was excellent with not much traffic on the road. Most of the buses and cars carried tourists, mostly foreigners. We passed through   Fatehpur Sikri  and the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary enroute.

Around noon, we reached Jaipur. We had lunch at a roadside ‘dhaba’. As we readied to get into the car for the onward journey, we noticed that the front left tyre was punctured. To our dismay, the spare tyre too was deflated. Compounding our difficulty was the defective lug wrench, due to which the nuts could not be loosened. It took some time to locate a mechanic to fix the puncture in both the tyres.

While the mechanic was putting the wheel back on to the rim, Shishir’s six-year old son, Arpan, wanted to try his hand on tightening the screw. The small hands could not hold the lug wrench tightly, due to which, the lug wrench slipped and hit him on the face. He had a cut on the face with blood oozing out of the wound. Arpan’s mother, Deepali, was in tears and tried to give first aid with the cotton and medicine available in the medical kit. However, with blood still trickling, we rushed him to a medical clinic nearby where the doctor gave him some stitches. The incident shook Deepali so much that she wanted to return to Agra. However, after some persuasion by Shishir, she agreed to continue with the Mt. Abu trip. Time was running out, we had already lost more than two valuable hours because of the two mishaps.

We had hardly ventured 20 kilometers out of Jaipur that I noticed a lone car wheel moving ahead of our car.  Since there were several cars on the road, it was difficult to figure out to which car the wheel actually belonged. Shishir jokingly commented that the person whose wheel was rolling on the road, would have a tough time, since we were far from the city and habitation with no market nearby. As the wheel slowed down, I noticed it swerved left and rolled down in a ditch besides the road. By this time, Shishir felt something wrong with the front left wheel.  Assuming that the tyre was again punctured, he slowed down and parked the car to have a look at the tyre. I was in for a surprise. The left front wheel was missing. The car was running on three wheels.

The wheel that we had seen a few seconds earlier merrily rollicking on the road, actually belonged to our car. As we realized the gravity of what had actually happened, we sighed in relief. We had averted a serious accident. With the car running on three wheels and at a speed of over 100 kmph, anything could have happened with so many cars, buses and trucks on the road.

Since I knew where the wheel had landed in the ditch, I went to retrieve it. There it was sans the lug nuts. The problem now was how to fix the wheel to the car. As we were discussing various options, a good Samaratin stopped by. Knowing our problem, he suggested that we remove one nut from the remaining three wheels and fasten the fourth wheel with those three nuts. He also informed that the next market was around 10 kms ahead, where a car workshop is available.  Since the lug wrench was defective, it was difficult to remove the nut from the wheel. We waived at cars passing by to stop so that we could take a wrench to fix the wheel, but many ignored. A few who stopped by made some excuse and moved ahead. Noticing Shishir struggle with the wrench, I went back to the place from where I had retrieved the wheel to see if I could get hold of the nuts. I was hoping against hope, looking all around with no success. In between, I prayed to God to help us.

As I came on to road out of the ditch where the wheel had landed, I saw a small boy, around 8 to 9 years old, coming towards me. He was fair complexioned and wore a big a smile on his face.

Approaching me, he asked, “Are you looking for this?” he stretched his hand forward and opened his fist. All the four nuts glistened in his hand. I could not believe my eyes. I stared at the boy, who was still smiling and was calm and quiet.  

“Yes,” I said, “but where did you get these?”

 “They were lying there on the road besides that tree,” he said, pointing to the tree around 100 metres away. He handed over the nuts to me.

“Thank you very much, son,” I said. “you have come to us as a messiah. Come, let me hand this over to my friend before he removes the nuts from the other wheels.”

I held him by the shoulder and both of us moved towards the car. I was extremely happy and elated at finding the four nuts. I could not control my excitement and thus moved a bit faster to hand over the nuts to Shishir, leaving the little boy behind.

“Look, I have got all the four nuts”, I told Shishir delightedly.

” Where did you find them?”, he asked, pleasantly surprised. The lines of worry on his forehead had vanished. He looked up at the sky as if thanking God.

“That boy there, he gave me the nuts”, I said, pointing to the road behind.  

Shishir and I turned back but the boy was not there.

“He was with me till a few seconds back. Where can he go,” I said in bewilderment.

We looked all around, but there was no trace of the boy. We looked on either side of the road and across the barren fields. He had vanished in thin air. There was no chance that within a few seconds the boy could have gone so far away out of our sight.

I thanked the Almighty to coming to our rescue in the guise of a boy.  The boy was a real MESSIAH. I had just witnessed a miracle.

DELHI GOVERNMENT SITS OVER THE DUST STORM

Delhi and it’s adjoining areas have been engulfed by a thick blanket of dust for the past two days. The dust storm has purportedly originated from Afghanistan and has entered the capital via Rajasthan. It is surprising that there was no prior warning from the meteorological department of any impending storm. This is making the meteorological department irrelevant. Most of the predictions of the meteorological department do not turn out to be true. It is high time government took serious steps to ensure that the scientists at the meteorological department are ably equipped to give correct weather predictions. Maybe, the equipment and infrastructure required for the same is insufficiently available.  

But, coming back to the dust storm, it has made life of the residents in the area miserable. The air quality is in the ‘severe’ and ‘hazardous’ level in all the areas. There has been a rise in respiratory problem cases being handled at hospitals. There are advisories coming from various agencies asking people to remain indoors. But what is the Delhi government doing to ameliorate the condition of the general public? The Chief Minister and his cabinet members are busy in a sit-in at the LG’s office for the past four days in protest against the LG not ‘instructing’ the bureaucrats to call off the four-month old ‘strike’. Whatever may be the rationale for the sit-in by the chief ministers and his minister, the dust storm should have been viewed seriously by them and the sit-in temporarily shelved so that the government takes appropriate action to lessen the sufferings of the common man.

Mr. Arvind Kejriwal, the name of your party is “AAM ADMI” (common man) and yet you choose to ignore their sufferings. The common man is not worried about the wrangling between you and the LG or even the PM. What is worrying is that you continue to sit-in the air-conditioned office of the LG ignoring the common man. This was the appropriate time when you should have risen above party politics and as a Chief Minister, ensured that your ministers and the Delhi government officers were on the street ensuring compliance of appropriate steps taken to reduce the sufferings of the common man.

All is still not lost, my friend. The meteorological department has forecast that this condition will last for a few more days. Pray they prove wrong again, but if this is true by fluke, you can redeem some of your lost goodwill.