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.
