There is hope

Some of you may have heard about these two things:

First up, the car accident. Reads like this.

After visiting a friend in Kengeri on a Sunday evening, 4 of us are driving back home and are on Mysore road. Our car is stationary for about 20 seconds or so at a traffic jam when another car crashes into ours from behind. I get out and see a lady at the wheel. She says she slept on the wheel. My boot is completely damaged. I yell, use abusive language, threaten to hit them, abuse their community and most of all, curse all the women who drive. They react pretty much the same way, others join to either hit each other or diffuse the situation. We block the already choked traffic for another half an hour before deciding to be a little considerate to the rest of the crowd.

I decide to file an FIR, but it being a Sunday, we realise we need to go all the way to Kengeri the next day to get an FIR lodged. We run around in circles to get one done, and as we have experienced in the past, we give up after a week of non sense.

Finally, I take the car to the service station. They estimate the damage will cost me around one lakh, of which only about 60 or 70% will be covered by the insurance.

Since I failed to get an FIR and abused the family who caused this, there is no way for me to recover the balance 30k.

So, what is a fun Sunday visiting some folks, costs me around 30k, some sleepless nights, wasted working days running around from pillar to post to get an FIR, calls to friends and family to see who and how I can sue and of course the curse and the pain we caused to the folks who hit our car and vice versa.

So you think.

Sorry for the drama. That’s possibly how it could have turned out, but it didn’t.

Let’s do a flash back.

After visiting a …blah blah blah…blah blah blah…crashing…blah blah blah…slept on the wheel. My first reaction was “Are you ok?” The lady apologises for dozing off while driving the car. We ensure no one is hurt and move the two cars aside to not block the incoming traffic. We talk for a bit like normal people do, introduce ourselves, talk about their holiday from where they were returning, crack a joke about how this is possibly the worst time for a power nap and so on. The lady asks me to take her number down and let her know the details about the damage.

Her husband calls me the next morning and tells me how going through the FIR route is painful and since no one is hurt and there is no damage to public property, we can just go ahead and claim the insurance.

We keep in touch for the next two weeks while the car is being repaired, and when the final bill is raised, the difference I need to pay is INR 25,580. I call the lady and tell her the same. She asks me to send her my account number and the same day, she credits the amount to me. At no point do I insist on her paying the entire amount. She too does not insist on checking the bill or asking me if she could pay only a part of that.

Today, I get this message from her.
“Gd morn Sandeep. How is ur car? Thx for being so considerate and understanding. Makes one realise that there are still good people left in this world! All the best.”

My reply. “Ditto.”

Oh well, let me not get all mushy about this now. There are still good people like her and yes, there’s hope. Let me talk about the second item listed above some other day.