Final Destination

I am going mad. Heard about the Patalpani tragedy in the news and honestly did not pay any attention to it. News and newspapers are full of accident reports everyday. Later on facebook i saw some people posting the accident video on their walls. I was not keen to watch that either. Especially after witnessing the aftermaths of an accident on Hosur Road flyover just a week back, I was in no mood to see anything distressing like that. And then finally a colleague forwarded that footage on my office mail. Not only did he send the video, he came running and asked me to play it even before i realized i had a mail from him. And then i played it. It was about a 2 minutes video and it is one of the most disturbing thing that i have ever seen. First time played on mute. Then played again this time with volume. Played again to see what was the level of water when they all noticed it and why didn't they run when everyone else did. Then again to see where exactly were they positioned that they could not escape. Each time thinking and wondering if they hadn't done this, if they hadn't done that, and i went on watching the video again and again at least ten times. Before leaving the office that evening, i decided to watch it again as this video was not leaving my head. I wanted to flush it out of my mind so i called an old friend and chatted for a long time, which actually took me away from this story.

After coming back home, when i retired to bed, I found myself thinking about those people. If they would have just sat where they were and waited for help, if they would have ran faster, if they hadn't held to each other.. but finally these permutations and combinations were not going to help. It has already happened. And the result is out there. Unnerving. Were there chances that anyone survived? I hadn't followed the news as such. And then i started googling. To find more videos, longer ones. Some other people talking about what happened. Analysis on how water level rose so much in a matter of few seconds. How people could have rescued them had it not been so quick. Found that the boys survived. Felt a little better but reading the insensitive comments from people was driving me nuts. So many experts being cynical about their actions. Lets be serious, no one wants to die. Think about it, water rose past the danger level in absolutely no time. And all the people who remained stuck belonged to the same family. It didn't take a minute from when it started. Does it not make one believe destiny is all powerful. This came nowhere and finished people of one family alone. I kept my laptop aside and tried to sleep. But then the video kept playing in my head and made me restless. I went back into the internet to explore more. And then slowly I consumed all the information available, and if that wasn't enough, I looked up their facebook profiles also. Now i know their faces, age, from where they did their schooling, what others thought of them, et al.

Idle mind is a devil's workshop. I had no reason to go out and explore all about them, but i did. I shouldn't have done that. It has made me more restless now. I will spend my day wandering today and will not give myself a chance to sit at home alone until I am over this.