In praise of Mumbai's finest......मुंबईचे सर्वोत्तम .....

Every afternoon, she left to attend a computer animation class in the city , about 10 miles away. She would take one of Mumbai's long distance buses, and after several years of tangling with the crowds therein, had now perfected the knack of being one of them, as they all clutched and accelerated along Mumbai's randomly potholes roads.

She would finish her class just before 5 and catch a bus back. Her class was in Andheri, one of Mumbai's busiest areas, in one of the western suburbs, and on one of its busiest streets, now trying to manage more crowds than it was meant to see. Given the uncertain delays that are now a part of Mumbai life, she always called her mother once she was at the bus stop.

She waited, and she waited. No sign of the bus. Maybe one had just gone. Besides there was a biggish crowd , given the peak evening hours just setting in. She had to pickup a package , and she thought she should avoid the usual rush-rush-squeeze-and-slide-in technique of getting a foothold in the bus. She thought she ought to walk a bit further down near the big bridge, where she would get access to 2 more buses going to her home area. So a better chance of getting a place to sit in the bus, unlike most days when she travelled standing all the way....

And so she started walking. The pavements were taken over by various hawkers, selling everything from purses, to clothes to latest bestsellers at throwaway prices. She had to buy a cake and a gift, and having done that, she stepped on to the road with her rucksack and packages, , and wove through the people waiting for various buses at the various bus stops that lined the road.

She quickened her pace. This was her everyday path, and once she got into a bus she would call her folks at home.

The next thing she knew was that something hit her from the back, and she was flat out on the road. Her eyes were shut, and it took an instant for her to realize that she was hit by a speeding motorcycle. The same motorcycles, that specialize in taking over traffic from the left, and make life very difficult for ordinary folks alighting from and climbing into, buses, as they drive uncontrollably in the thin road strip between the waiting people and the bus. Road construction in Mumbai has given birth to motorcycle desperados.

People gathered. Mostly all men. Some who were waiting for a bus. Some who were selling something by the roadside. Some, students like her, on their way home. And then she felt something warm and red spreading across her face. There was a dull pain in the head. She looked around her for her package. It lay a few feet from her, still inside the plastic bag, .

"Take her to Cooper Hospital, take her to Cooper" , someone said; "there is a deep gash"....

"Oye" , "Where did the motorcycle go ? " Shameless fellow. How many times do we shout at them ? Chase him...."

"And the motorcycle got away ? The swine...." someone else thundered...

They stopped a rickshaw. A gentleman got in with her and they rushed her to Cooper Hospital, the nearest Municipal hospital. Along with the packages. She didn't know what was happening. The headache had become intense. her eyes were paining, her face was bleeding, and there was blood spattered all over her clothes. The good Samaritan gentleman offered her a big cloth piece to hold against her wound, and it immediately soaked up the gushing blood. Clotting had set in by the time she was wheeled into emergency.


The staff instantly attended to her, put stitches on her forehead where the wound was bad, dressed her other wounds on her arm and hands. As a child she faced injections better than anyone else, and she did the same now. But iodine and benzoine was something else. Her mother, who normally blew air on her wounds whenever iodine burned, was not there beside her. But the pain and the hurt was too much, and the nurses were alarmed at her uninhibited cries of pain..... Local anaesthetic for stitching and a standard tetanus shot was given. Very interestingly, , all this was done by a very capable male nurse, as the female nurses thought she was making an unnecccessary amount of noise, and stood away.....(So she told her mother later, but it is possible that people were assigned work according to their expertise....)

All this time, the rickshaw driver and the good Samaritan waited outside. Guarding the package she had with her, but was asked to leave outside. Her face was carefully cleaned and the signs of bleeding were now less intimidating. She emerged from the ER her clothes speckled with blood, as if she was emerging from a fight. They asked her where she lived, and the gentleman decided to see her home, given the state she was in.

In the meanwhile her mother was worried as she didn't reach home in time, and neither was her cell phone reachable. Worried thoughts clouding the mind. Something must have happened. Put on the television and radio, to see if they were reporting anything. This was Mumbai. Anything could happen.... Worry advanced into desperation. Phone calls were made to her friends if they had heard from her.....a sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach. Holding on to a slim glimmer of hope that said her cell phone battery could simply be discharged, and she would be shortly home.....


An hour later she called her mother.

The rickshaw driver and the gentleman had accompanied her towards her home, in the rickshaw. There was a huge traffic jam a kilometer away from her house. A routine fixture. The diesel fumes and heat made her nauseous, and as she did every day, she decided to get off and walk the last kilometer home. Both the worried gentleman thought she would feel giddy with the loss of blood and the walking effort ,in such polluted air.

But she was adamant.

So she got off, and walked, and suddenly realized her cell phone was in her pocket. She tried to switch it on, and it worked. She called home. Her father rushed to pick her up, and her mother heaved a huge sigh of thankfulness and relief. A sudden loss of energy, following a clearing of a huge tension. This season, the variety amongst "things that could happen to anyone" was simply huge, given the current scenario.

And so she came home, carrying a package with a chocolate cake inside, which had survived the entire trauma on the road and in the municipal hospital. It was to be a secret and her mother was not to know she was bringing it for her mother's birthday the next day. So her mother pretended to be busy talking to the doctor on the phone , while the cake, with the totally homogenized icing and shaken up innards, was hidden in the refrigerator. ......

A wet-wipe of hair crusted with dried blood, a warm sponging, a hot dinner, and a cool glass of buttermilk later, she lay on the couch talking to her folks about the whole thing. How they helped.How she trusted. And how she didn't even know their names.....

No one knows who the two good Samaritans were. She told her mother that the trip to the hospital etc was not charged by the driver. The other gentleman thought he shouldn't let the girl go alone. They didn't even live anywhere near her area, but simply thought they should be doing what they did. The rickshaw driver , probably lost a huge amount of his daily earnings, and the gentleman was probably late reaching home himself, where his own family probably worried.

But in a city which has seen the worst of times, this was a sign that ordinary folks had extraordinary spirit.

Ordinary folks who crowd the roads, rushing home, walking, or by public transport, but they simply dash in to help when it is required. They have done it in every single bomb blast and natural calamity in Mumbai, and they continue to do it again and again. Displaying the Bhgawad Gita philosphy , that says, do your work as the best form of worship, and dont worry about the fruits of your work. And then they fade out of the picture, having immeasurably enriched our belief in the basic goodness of people.

A Public Municipal Hospital, often constantly criticised in the papers every alternate day, shines big and bright this festive season, having done its bit , in an outstanding and timely manner, for a young girl, alone, hurt, bleeding, and accompanied by two golden hearted folks.


The girl is my daughter. She is just back from our Institute hospital, where her doctor attended to her in detail, checked the wounds, cleaned and dressed them , and praised the nifty work done by the Cooper Hospital personnel. I am still trying to find out how to trace who the two good Samaritans were. My daughter doesn't remember too much. Just a huge surge of adrenalin that brought her home from the jammed up traffic, leaving two dumbstruck people in a rickshaw that couldn't move ahead........

This festive season, after a traumatic set of events, its time to believe once again in the goodness of the common man, and whatever inspires the man to behave so.....

And I am still wondering how to go about tracing these two wonderful people......