The Divine Saviour

The old Bombay-Poona Road is now thankfully less frequented. But till a few years ago it used to be fatigued and over-burdened with traffic. On its either side, just as it begins the climb up the Western Ghats lies a luxuriously sprawling residential colony. The place where I spent a beautiful part of my carefree childhood.

Imposing stone bungalows with large french windows and huge doors. High ceilings and open verandahs. Vastly spread-out lawns and colourful flower-beds. The bright golden sunrises and the dusky orange sunsets. Monsoons filled with misty grey clouds , romantic green valleys and mountains and the aroma of adrak-waali-chaai
It was a dreamland.

Schools were about two kilometers down in Khopoli or a few kilometers up in Khandala.
Most families preferred the school in  Khopoli, which ran in two shifts.
Morning and Afternoon.
And two languages : English and Marathi.

The Company bus made school trips to facilitate the residents. My mother was a teacher in the English medium school.
She and my younger siblings used to go for the morning shift.

One morning Mummy was waiting with her twins at their usual spot for the bus under the huge Old Peepal Tree, near the Gol Park a little away from  the edge of the road. Traffic on the Bombay-Poona Road was picking up as the morning got brighter. Swift and slick cars smartly moving past the heavily loaded trucks labouriously making way to reach their destinations.

Perhaps she had seen the bus coming because Mummy moved away taking the children along from where they had been standing, reaching closer to the place where the bus was supposed to stop. They had not taken much note of the truck that was coming down a little faster than the rest of the vehicles, till it nose-dived crashing into the boundary of the Gol Park under the Peepal Tree.

Dazed to numbness the three of them stood motionless as the the truck-driver and his companion struggled to get themselves out avoiding the broken pieces of glass. Ignoring their own bruises they straightened themselves. And then the driver spoke.
He said: "As the brakes failed and I lost control, I saw you all standing exactly on the spot where I knew my vehicle would collide ... had no way of cautioning you ... the only option was to ask God's help ..."
And then I saw you move away with kids ... Oh! My God ... what a relief that was... !!! "
To say it in his words:
"Eishwar hain ... aur wo hi bachatey hain ..."
Yes he could have honked incessantly, but he admitted that it did not strike him !!!!!

Miracles were not the privilege of Prophets alone
They happen even today with prayer and will power 🙏

(Me ... Many years later ... at the spot where Mummy and my siblings were standing that morning ... Pic clicked by my sister ... It was actually she who was with Mummy at this place that day 😊 )