Yesterday was a day which reiterated how important a right decision at the right time really is.
I’ve been living in Mumbai for a decade now, but memories and my mother pull me back to my quaint little town of Nashik. Last weekend was like any other. My brother and I were visiting our mum. But what we faced on our way back to our karmabhoomi was nothing short of a nightmare, something we could never have anticipated.
Nashik turned into a violent Surpankha on Sunday evening.
We left home around 3 pm, the plan was to be in Mumbai by night time. We set out on the route we’ve travelled a million times. But after we crossed Pandavlena, things didn’t seem right. We saw many trucks parked curiously by the side. We thought they might be getting challan-ed. Good for us I remember thinking, we won’t get the horrid traffic they usually stir up.
But about 5 kms ahead of Pandavlena, we met with the worst traffic snarl I’ve ever witnessed. Huge trucks, private vehicles, state transport and private buses stood stranded. We guessed the reason to be a bad accident or some such, but couldn’t see much ahead. But the traffic only kept piling up. Now there were police vans and ambulances around us too. As we found out later, Maratha protesters were wreaking havoc in the light of an attempted rape case near Trimbakeshwar in Nashik district.
Then we spotted a truck thoroughly damaged. The driver was in a shock and panic. He was showing the damage to bystanders. But then we saw policemen in a state transport bus, its windows and windscreen shattered. A sense of doom took over. It was serious, this wasn’t a regular traffic hiccup. I Googled the situation but couldn’t find much. Mum back home spotted a small strip on a Marathi news channel flashing the news of a rasta roko on the Nashik-Mumbai road.
We had some scope to turn around. Thankfully, we were still about 15 minutes away from all the action. It was a herculean task to turn through the chaos, but we managed and a few cars behind us did the same. We were now causing the jam, but it was a spontaneous decision, a turn towards safety.
As soon as we reached a point, where taking another route to Mumbai was possible, we encountered police vans asking us to go back the way we came from, towards Nashik. Police officers told us that the situation looked bad, and they weren’t sure if traffic will ease up even by Monday morning.
Just then, mother called back confirming the reason behind the agitation, and asked us to leave immediately. Buses were being burnt according to the news feed on TV. We decided to halt in Pune for the night and head back to Mumbai on Monday morning.
It took us seven hours just to reach Pune, thanks to the bad roads and the violent protests. But it’s a day I will never forget. It ended well since we managed to join our cousin in Pune, as she was bringing in her birthday. But what stayed with me that night was the thought, ‘what if we hadn’t turned around?’ We heard that the situation got much worse before it got better.