I lost my brother

One day, you call your cousin (brother) for casual talk, when you are hundreds of kilometres away. Your cousin (sister) picks up the phone only to tell you that he is not at home. You acknowledge and hang up. After a day or two you call him again but he is unavailable as he is at his mausi’s (aunt) house. He is focusing on his studies. You reply with a dry “okay” and hang up. You tried to get his aunt’s number in vain. You chuck away the thought of calling him, thinking you can talk to him when you get home. When the time came for you to go home, you were excited, there was so much to talk about with your brother. But when you got home, you heard the shocking news about him.
This is my story from when I was studying in Kota, preparing for the JEE. The person to whom am trying to reach is my brother Hitesh (Raja), he is of same age as mine so I am a lot attached to him. We spent a lot of time together playing, having fun. I decided to have a conversion with him on a lot of things. As I am heading towards him a new feeling ran in my veins as we will be talking to each other after a long time. My mama ji was there to receive me at the railway stations .After a formal talk he told me that there is something we haven’t told you. I thought it must not be a big thing then he told me that Raja is no more. Suddenly I don’t know what I have heard a few seconds ago. Then I don’t know what happened next but I can’t feel anything next every memory which I have with him comes in my mind. Then I am able to ask a single question how and when. Then he told me, the day when you first call him and we pretend you he is not at home, he met with an accident on bike with a truck. He wass not on the wrong lane but the truck driver lost control, and all this happened. He was not wearing a helmet; his whole body have no major wounds except with a broken neck. He died at the very same moment. He further continued, we once tried to contact you about this but we can’t, fearing what will happen to you when you are at such a large distance. These words broke my heart.

 Sometimes in this time gap I realise that something wrong must have happened but the belief on my family give me always a safe and secure feeling. I lost my brother but don’t want others to lose theirs. It took a lot of time to write such a small portion of my story, whenever I tried to mention my brother’s name, tears starts running from my eyes. It’s been 2 years he is not with us,but we still miss him. I don’t want anything like this happens to anyone.  Always use safety precautions.

Pankaj Yadav ( with Raja)

My Uncle

How does it feel? How does it feel?

It's as if time has stopped. It's as if everything has come to a standstill, and so have you. So much to do, to scream and run and jump, and yet nothing comes out.

It's one of those moments in life. 

I watched, with my two eyes as my uncle rammed his speeding car into a pickup truck, and splinter into millions of pieces and singe, singe in flames. 

We were all returning from a wedding, and my uncle was drunk to the point of oblivion. He got into a huge fight when we asked him not to drive, and finally agreed that he would just bring the car from the parking lot to in front of us, and then my mother could drive us home. 

So my mother and I waited as my uncle came up the road.

He pretty obviously wasn't thinking, for the car was hurtling at an insane speed, and didn't stop where we were standing. My mother yelled at my uncle and ran after the car, while I was numb from the freezing winter, and also shock and bewilderment.

It didn't take long, but felt like an eternity. Suddenly out of nowhere, a mammoth of a truck seemed to emerge on the road right in front of the one my uncle was on.

I could hear anything, nor see anything. My throat was dry, my heart beating wildly. I felt disabled, numb.

Gone. In a matter of minutes, a 35-year-old software engineer in TCS, gone up in flames and splinters. A 35-year-old man who was the light and life of our entire family. All charred and shattered.

I still have no idea what I was thinking back then, looking at my mother's silhouette, the car in flames, people rushing about, clutching their sweaters and shawls, light, noise, death surrounding us. I certainly felt the bite of the cold set in, piercing my flimsy clothing material - but no. My uncle couldn't die, could he? I swallowed, watched my mother and the slowly-growing crowd. 

In a matter of a while, my uncle's family was torn asunder. His wife and daughter moved to Chennai to live on their own, far from the place which served to remind them of that accident day after day, night after night.

Perhaps this is nothing compared to what people have suffered in road accidents. But yeah, road accidents shouldn't be happening. It's something seriously messed up if we're developing at such an accelerated rate, and continue losing people to brutal road accidents. My uncle isn't going to come back to us, anyway.

Anjali Bhavan