Near to Death

I have had a quite a few near to death experience and I am going to write about one of those. It happened in parry’s when I was 12 years old. Parry’s has always been an enjoyable place to me during my childhood. On this particular day I was in parry’s with mother and grandfather. We were going around few shops to buy something. I still remember we were standing in a general merchant store. We were there for more than half an hour and I was behaving restless. The shop extended till the road, occupying the whole platform as it is the trend in most shops in parry’s. we were literally standing in the road and the road was very narrow. The place was full of garbage and it was smelling bad. To my astonishment a garbage lorry came and was cleaning up the road. The lorry stood near each garbage pile and the driver as well as cleaner were clearing everything off. The lorry stood just a few feet away from our shop i.e., just in front of us. My grandfather was busy negotiating with the owner of the store. The lorry driver usually puts the gear to neutral and comes down to clear up and divert traffic. So he came down and was diverting the traffic just in front of us. The lorry was very old and it was like trembling( shaking to the core). The parts were like about to fall that was the view I had when I first saw the lorry. Then after sometime, due to the trembling of the lorry the gear dropped on its own and the vehicle started moving on its own.

We were standing just in front of lorry and the lorry was moving without a driver. I haven’t imagined a situation like that, even the most crazy idea would not lead anyone to think of a lorry moving without a driver but we were there standing in front of driverless lorry.(ha..ha…ha……..). everyone in the road started screaming and everybody was pushing and pulling each other . The store owner pulled in my grandfather, my mother pulled me with her into the shop. We all were above some bag and we were unable to move.

The lorry didn’t move very fast, so even if we had met with an accident, we would have come out with injuries but the minutes that passed by when the lorry moved across took us near death. I could still hear my mother screaming and pushing me along with her inside the shop. She was literally fighting for place against a wall of things. She held me in one hand and my grandfather in other hand and was literally pushing us inside the shop.

The lorry came to a halt after colliding with a bike parked outside the next shop. Then the driver stepped in and killed the engine. The lorry was like a demon till that second and everyone was scared to go near it. I was scared to hell on that day but I will never forget that incident.