The Glass Wall

This Saint-Gobain advertisement always used to make me smile. This and this are more amusing Saint Gobain ads that end up embarrassing people. Yours truly had a similar experience with such a clear glass last fortnight. However, it was more than just embarrassment I had to endure because I failed to see a glass wall. I had wanted to write this since the incident but typing with just three fingers of the left hand is much more pain than I had imagined. Here is how it happened:

Saturday Night Fever. It was one of the those Saturdays when I keep sleeping the entire day and spend most of the conscious time with my beloved I am typing on right now. 18th October 2008 was one such lazy Saturday when at 8:11 in the evening popped up an IM window titled Kushagra, asking me to come to the paani-batashe-waala exactly midway our apartment complexes. Now I am not a big fan of gol-gappe but my sister definitely is, and we decided to go out. After all it was Saturday night.

We teleported there in a minute, and after sis and Kush had their fill and Pawan and I tasted a few paani-puris, the question of what next on Saturday eve arose again. I suggested tea and junta readily agreed. There were numerous options thrown at me: the Day Fresh bakery behind where we were standing, the tea stall beside Spencer's, mom-made tea at my and self-made at Pawan and Kush's house, MSRIT Canteens, Freska, CCD, and Barista.

Final Destination. The two smaller joints were ruled out because they do not have good tea. Going back home was out of question. We wanted good tea and not coffee hence CCD and Barista were eliminated. Pawan and Kush had been to Freska the day before and had good basil tea, so we narrowed upon the MSRIT canteen. Kush picked up his car and we went out in an expedition to the Engineering College canteen I had been to once, five years ago when I had visited Bangalore on a college project. Despite walking around half an hour, and thanks to some really helpful and knowledgeable security guards, and my brilliant memory, we could not locate the canteen. Almost giving in, we went to the Food Court, but they did not have tea. Similar was the answer at the doors of four other canteens in the campus we knocked.

Someone suggested we go back, but how could we accept defeat after wasting an hour in the quest of tea on a Saturday eve? We decided to (or were destined to) visit Freska, a small but nice Continental restaurant on 80-feet Road, Dollar's Colony.

The Happening. We park. Freska looks crowded. Now this place is like a boutique restaurant with different compartments. There is a huge table seating almost a dozen people in the front room. I, leading the group, see the passage to the other room beside the overcrowded table and move my rudder towards that vacant passway.

I had not even entered the place when I stopped in my tracks. For almost three seconds I did not know what happened. Ruhi later tells me I stood there in shock and exclaimed "Abe!" thrice. The door was in front of the table, and I had walked into the very clear glass wall beside it. The whole glass had come crashing down. I looked down and cursed aloud when I saw blood gushing out of a one-and-a-half inch deep and equally wide wedge in my right forearm.

Rush Hour. No sooner had I exclaimed than everyone realised the gravity of the situation. Kush swung the car into a quick U, and we headed back towards the Ramaiah Campus, which was luckily only 200 meters away. We were stopped by a gang of four cops in this small distance, but they easily let us go without even seeing my arm that soaked the car seat completely. Ruhi had started crying though I had absolutely no sensation of pain, maybe the shock was higher than pain.

Pawan and I were dropped at the hospital gate and Kush and Ruhi went to park. They later followed my blood trail on the tiled floor to locate us in the emergency. A team of three doctors greeted me and went to action on my arm. They asked me not to look but I rather took this photo. (Disclaimer: Click at your own risk.) I was xrayed and cleaned and administered local antihaemorrhagic agents, and later sutured.

The Others. There is a wound on the little finger of the left hand, and I refused taking a suture there. There are at least six scratches and bruises on the right wrist. And there is a huge slash on the dorsal side of the right forearm that I noticed when the doc was about to stitch the deep one, over an hour later. This slash led to a flap of the skin bent up, which was put back and required more stitches than the deep one. This flap has necrosed now, and a thick, hard clot has formed over and beneath it, and doctors and I are still worried about it.

Office Space. The ensuing two weeks saw turning my room into office and my bed into workstation. The crucial release made me work with three gauche fingers. Office was manageable, but everything else is hindered, from brushing the teeth to eating to bathing. Clumsily, gauche'ly in the literal sense, struggling like a toddler, I've been doing everything with the left hand till today, when I can move the mouse around and press backspace and delete with the right. Now the right hand is behaving like an infant and I'll have to teach it many things.

The Great Escape. I am really thankful the glass did not cut any tendons/veins/arteries. The glass did not hit my face/head/eyes. Or the chest or neck. The outcomes are unimaginable. Worse could have been had it fallen a few inches north and slit my wrist. I shudder to think how vulnerable I was during those few seconds.

The storm is now over. Me back to blogging makes me feel things are falling back in place. I shall be back in full action very soon.

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