The car sped along, its tyres leaving a spray of water behind it. The rain had slowed down to a drizzle but the road was still wet. Nilu clutched the steering wheel as her instructor had taught her—hands at two and ten. She glanced at the speedometer—sixty. Too fast, she thought and eased it down to fifty.
Nilu got her driver’s license a week back. It was her fourth attempt and she had almost given up hope. Her friends had told her to drop it.
‘Just take the Uber,’ they had told her.
Nilu was no quitter, so she had gone for it again, and she had gotten it. Fourth time’s the charm, she had said and laughed along with her friends.
However, she still struggled with the car. Sometimes she wondered why the hell she tried to get that damned license. An Uber would have been so much better. No hassle and no stress. Today, she was having similar thoughts. She had almost driven into the back of another car a few kilometers back and she still had about twenty to go until she reached her home.
She gave the rearview mirror a quick glance, noticed the flickering headlights of a motorbike, and kept on driving.
***
Raghu wiped the water droplets off of his helmet’s visor as he cruised along the same road Nilu was driving on. He used the same hand to check the object tied to the back of his motorbike to make sure that it was still secure. It had been difficult to tie it and hold it in place back there and Raghu had done his best. However, he checked it from time to time to ensure that it didn’t come undone. Once satisfied, his hand was back on the handlebar. His worn out grey shirt, wet from the rain, stuck to his chest and fluttered behind him.
Raghu’s phone started ringing and vibrating in his shirt pocket just as the car up front came into view, slightly blurry with all the droplets that had freshly appeared on his visor. He let the phone ring. Raghu knew that it was probably his wife checking up on where he was. He was just a few minutes from home.
He sped up and caught up to the green hatchback.
Wait till he sees it, he thought as he quickly checked the object in the back seat again, smiled, and toggled the bike’s headlights a couple of times.
He saw the girl in the driver’s seat as he was side by side with the car. Little did he know that she would be the last person he would ever see.
***
Should have taken an Uber, Nilu thought and smacked the steering wheel with her left hand. Her right hand, not anticipating the sudden force, gave way, and the car veered slightly to the right. It struck the motorbike that was trying to overtake her. The screech of metal on metal hurt Nilu’s ears. Her heart skipped a beat and her hands, driven by sheer fear and panic, turned the wheel to the left. The car’s hood crumbled as it hit the guardrails. The loud bang deafened her. The seat belt tightened around Nilu, holding her in a safe embrace. Pieces of glass and plastic rained around her. The airbag cushioned most of the impact.
Nilu would come out of this unscathed, albeit shell-shocked. She would not step foot inside a car for the months to come, and it would be years until she would drive again. The crashing sound that she heard right before her car struck the guardrails would always haunt her in her sleep. She would hear that sound every time she stepped foot in a car, but with time, that sound would fade into a faint whisper.
***
Raghu’s frail hands slipped as the car struck him. He felt the bike slip away from under him as he got thrown off of it onto the incoming traffic. His phone was still ringing when it slid out of his shirt pocket.
The bus went right through him and Raghu died almost immediately. His bike scraped across the asphalt, leaving a trail of sparks, and the rope holding the object on the back seat came undone. The bike stopped a couple of feet away from the road, and the object, a yellow tricycle, landed upside down, a little away from where the bike lay.
One of the tricycle’s tyres was missing. Its left handle bar was bent beyond repair. The yellow paint had come off in a lot of different places, revealing the dark green metal beneath it. The right pedal was broken in half.
No child would ever ride that tricycle. It would later be carried away by the workers who cleared the accident site, and would end up in the local garbage dump. It would lay there for months to come, abandoned, as a gift that was never given, and a moment of love that never happened.
