May 17th, 2009. There was an accident on the highway. Two of my school friends were dead on the spot – Praneeth and Shiva. They were on my bike.
We started off at 10 in the morning from Secunderabad. It was a school get-together. I was not planning to go but once I met the friends, I had to go. As if that’s not enough, I went to Praneeth’s house and picked him up. He was never in the plan but was ready in 5 minutes. Shiva was never in the list too. Somehow even he turned up. And there were some 15 other people. We went to a resort near Ghatkesar. We played in the pool. We had some fun. We ate our lunch. And started back at 3 PM or so..
Praneeth had my keys. So he took out my bike. I did not think of asking him the bike back. I don’t know why but I should have. I was going to sit on the rear seat. But it was not to be so. Some other friend asked me to ride his bike because he wanted to ride some other new bike of another friend. So I went on to that guys bike. As I was on another bike, Shiva went and sat behind Praneeth – That was my place. All this happened in a minute or split of it.
So I was the one who was the reason for Praneeth to come and I virtually grabbed Shivas life. Technically speaking, my life is simply the opportunity cost of his. I was lucky in some ways. Not so lucky in other terms. I don’t believe in fate, consequently, I don’t have any words to describe it.
We started off from there and the accident took place in the next 10 minutes. It’s hard to describe how we felt when we saw that our friends who were playing with us half an hour back were not alive now!
But i can swear any day on this. They were two really good fellows. Were not perfect. No one is. But were a lot better than some people who are alive. Would have been nice to have them around.