Chennai: I am yet to recover from the shock, though a day has lapsed already. There was so much of crying and howling; such a lot of blood all over.
My son Manikandan and I were returning from Tirunelveli by an 'ultra-deluxe' bus after worshipping at the famous Nellaiyappar Kanthimathi Ambal temple and witnessing its annual car festival. The bus took off sharply at 5.30 in the evening and the promise was it would reach us to Chennai in 12 hours. The dinner halt was at Madurai at 8.30. It was a pleasant ride. Till that terrible thing happened a couple of hours later.
The bus was nearing Viralimalai and most of the passengers had begun to doze off. I was explaining that it was the Assembly constituency of state health minister C Vijaya Baskar. Suddenly, at about 10.30, there was a loud noise followed by screaming by the passengers. A sand lorry overtook us from the left, hit the bus and toppled, spilling plenty of its load into the bus.
We took a long time to recover from the shock. It was pitch dark and we could not even get out of the bus as its glasses were shattered and there was glass pieces strewn all over. Close to us, a college girl was screaming, “Anna, ennai kaappaathunga, kaappaathunga…” (Brother, please save me). The entire bus was reverberating with howls of hurt people. Son Mani and I tried to pull her out of the seat but we just couldn't; she was stuck between the metal roads and was profusely bleeding.
Locals from the nearby Kovilpatti village came rushing to help. Some got through the broken window of the driver. One of them shouted, “Driver poyittaaru”. (Driver is dead). Later I saw there was nothing of his body below the hip, just flesh. We were also told his name was Subramanian and the 32-year-old man had got married just last month.
I called Nagaraj, PA to the health minister, and briefed him the situation before asking him to rush ambulances. Some locals also called '108'. Four ambulances arrived in less than 15 minutes. Police came before that and along with the locals, they helped us out of the bus. We stood by the roadside, wondering what in providence had divided our fate from that of driver Subramanian. It appeared that the truck driver had run away.
It was only then that the journalist in me woke up from my personal trauma. I took a quick count of the victims; fortunately, only the driver was fatally injured but there were at least four passengers were horribly hurt. The girl seated close to her lost one of her legs, two men lost both their legs and a woman about 35 years old was unconscious in her seat with her left leg missing below the thigh.
The ambulances picked up the injured and rushed to the Trichy GH, about 40 km away. We were told that minister Vijaya Baskar was on the phone closely monitoring the situation and giving instructions to his PA Nagaraj who arrived at the spot along with the ambulances. The PA was good enough to drop me and son Mani at Trichy, past midnight. We managed to get two seats on a private bus to reach home in the morning.
My voice choked when I lit my pooja lamp after the morning bath. I cannot say why I cried: was it for driver Subramanian or was it in gratitude to God for letting the others live? Perhaps both.
