PLAYFUL PARALYSIS

[This is purely an act of fiction. Names, characters, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Content designed may provide helpful information on the subjects discussed along with presentations/illustrations for highlighting the plight of an aggrieved. The author assumes no liabilities of any kind with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents. Any resemblance to persons living or dead may be purely coincidental]

 

Sparkling under the morning sunshine, barely had I taken out my beauty out of the garage when a #juvenile or just beyond, rammed into my car, severely paralyzing it on a beautiful October morning in his playful gesture.

Barely had my son completed the honours of closing the garage gates that I usually do and, settled down in the co-driver’s seat while I was at the wheels. It was parked momentarily by the road near my residence, before intending to take off to attend to an appointment with the doctor. I was administering the customary sanitiser, in wake of the pan(man)demic and, put on the seat-belts.

Presumably, saw a car coming from behind in the rear view mirror and waited for it to pass before lowering the hand brake and pressing the accelerator to set the car in motion. The available road space beside was sufficient for a lorry to pass through. But then, suddenly, a loud thud!

I completely lost my breath for a few seconds. The impact was so intense that I felt something had hit my backbone. Within seconds, on regaining normalcy, got out to find out what had happened. By then, many in the neighbourhood had rushed out of their houses to gauge and help on hearing the loud bang. The right elbow had a bruise, and the knee on the same side hit the lower portion of the dashboard. The hand brake and seat belt saved from causing acute injuries.

The idiot of a driver, a teenage guy from the locality who resembled a frustrated infantile, accompanied by two of his friends, had rammed into the rear right wheel grazing through the bumper, causing severest of damages that baffled the guys at the authorised workshop even.

The car in blue, that hit my car in white, was a second-hand purchase and had an illegal bull-bar in the front, neither was it registered with the authorities in the name of its present owner nor had any  insurance that are mandatory for a vehicle to ply on city roads per the Motor Vehicles Act. More the so, the car didn’t even have the mandatory pollution control certificate. It was a crime and/or offence on multiple counts. 

Perhaps it’s possible only in this country where the owner’s son could drive 20 (twenty) kilometers without any valid papers from his home in Rajarhat to my locality near the Acropolis Mall in Kolkata. In between the stretch, he picked up one of his friends and came to meet their other friend who stayed in the neighbourhood.

The trio now boarded their toy for extreme push of adrenaline. The boy of the neighbourhood, who stays just a couple of apartments, further, took to the wheels with joy. He first drove north to south at 90 – 100 kmph on a 20 feet wide and less than 600 metres by length, a road in a busy residential locality that had many connecting by-lanes. He was returning at the same speed when he miserably lost control of the vehicle. Being a novice, he couldn’t gauge the allowable tolerance on the road to pass through, beside my stationary car. 

The collision brought the entire stretch to a halt as the road was blocked by the cars. Commotion apart, it was most immediately decided to tow away the cars to their respective authorised service centres for repairs with the erring parties agreeing to bear all repair costs for which I refrained from making a formal police complaint with #KolkataPolice to save the families and moresoever, the kids, from all forms of harassment. It was a good gesture from their part too, verbally assuring in front of all those present, to foot all expenses that I, as a thorough bred gentleman, accepted in good faith.

The parents being graduates from premier institutes of the country and into respectable positions in the society raised my quotient of assurances. I truly believed in them on face value and, spared and forgave the kids for their delinquency, given to understand the gravity of the situation that severely paralysed me and my car in their playful gesture to hit the fast lane. 

The vehicles were towed away and, late in the evening, received a whopping estimate from the authorised service centre that was immediately shared with the parents. It was then too that the parents of the driver kid and the owner, decently promised to foot the entire expenses. Again, in good faith, I shared my bank account details with the parents of the erring kids.

My good Karma took a severe beating filled with the harshest of ill sentiments the next day, with the parents of the kids turning hostile, foul and playing dirty over phone, instead of keeping their promises of clearing the repair costs sent through email, clearly dishonouring a gentleman’s agreement. The fear of their volte face made me realise hard that my gestures of saving the families were going down the drain in vain.

I was at the receiving end now. Their dubious nature was eating into me. I began to recollect how everybody has cast their aspersions about the veracity of the promises made by the families. All that I could do was to curse myself for not heeding to everyone’s advice to lodge a police complaint.

Just then, an SMS pinged in stating that the amount was transferred by the owner of the vehicle by NEFT on the previous night. I waited the entire day browsing my account for the amount to be credited but, all I got was no such deposit as a rude response.

A careful study of the SMS forwarded by the so called gentleman, the owner of the vehicle, who got his degree in mechanical engineering from one of the best technical institutes of the country, was smartly edited, for a transaction that he had committed earlier.

Premonitions led to closer inspection of the SMS that revealed that there was no blank space at A, there existed no such transaction ID mentioned as B, confirmed by my banker for any inward remittance from anyone into my account and, there was an extra space as shown in C (all marked within RED arrows). The account number has been purposely obscured here to protect of privacy of the, what should I say, sufficiently educated and intelligent fraudster with a bi-schizoid personality? This character exposition took a huge slide down by his act of brazen foolishness. I wondered, how could he strike consultancy deals with many governments and organisations with such a repute of devilish concoctions of mental framework that exhibit a remarkable manifestation of playing the game of deceit with cool!!

At this juncture, I pondered where their line of thinking was heading for. It was ultimately decided to lodge a formal police complaint with the police station under my residential jurisdiction of #KolkataPolice, citing all possible angles related to the entire episode and the tales that unfolded to serve an ultimatum for amicable settlement or face the laws of the land. That insulting moment in my life made me totally forget the pains of footing the huge repair costs all by myself. This was informed to the parents of the kids over telephone who began shouting at the top of their voices by then, shrugging aside all traits of decency and threatening me with dire consequences, quite ominous of the troubles that they would now be landing on. Their behaviour was somewhat like চোরের মায়ের বড় গলা [mother of a thief has the loudest voice..... a Bengali proverb].

All these were gifted in the season of festivities apart from the bodily injuries sustained on impact and the trauma that I and my son aren’t able to come to terms with still. A draft of the complaint was neatly typed with charges of rash driving, illegal possession of a car without change in ownership after
purchase, driving without valid documents like the motor vehicle insurance and pollution under control (PUC) certificate  and then, circulating a fraudulent SMS with an equally fraudulent transaction from a private bank of repute. Further to all these, it was also mentioned that carelessness and recklessness apart, the boy should also be charged with intentions to cause grievous injury and perhaps murder!

It was in the evening that the entire amount estimated for repairs, sent by the authorised service station, was transferred by UPI in 2 (two) installments by the recalcitrant families, as had been committed. The fear of humiliation, harassment and penalisation for the acts of crime committed with élan made them to succumb to the line of chicanery adopted.

All inexplicable harassments underwent in the due course remain to haunt me for the rest of my life thus, ending the playful paralysis up to a great extent.