Stranded & rescued: I was numb and just lay there

Recently a Rediff staffer shared his experience of being stranded in the middle of nowhere and being helped out by a bunch of unknown people. We invited readers to share similar stories.

Amit Bansal tells us how locals helped him when he met with an accident on his way to Pondicherry.

After completing my MBA in 2001, I took up a job in Chennai. I used to live in a flat with my colleague Samik. Both us belong to Delhi.

One particular weekend we decided to make a trip to Pondicherry, which is a three-hour drive from Chennai down the East Coast Road.

Since we did not have any conveyance of our own and did not want to go by bus, we decided to hire a Scooty. I think it may have been our inexperience on highways and the naivet of our youth that led us to take this extremely foolish decision.

As soon as we left the city limits, the Scooty broke down. We discovered that it would run only if we switched off the headlights. So we proceeded to move without any lights, totally in the dark, on the dangerous ECR highway with no helmets!

We stuck to the extreme left lane and were constantly being overtaken closely by fast-moving cars, buses and trucks. By then, we had realised the huge risk we had unnecessarily taken and were already ruing the decision. But we plodded on. I really wanted to thrash the guy who had let out this piece of junk to us.

By 8:30 pm, we had just managed to cover half the distance. Suddenly we hit something lying ahead and fell on the road. Fortunately there was no vehicle behind us or we could have been crushed. For a few moments, I was totally numb and just lay there.

And then, God showered his limitless grace on us. And we discovered just how impossibly kind fellow human beings can be.

All of a sudden, we were surrounded by a lot of people. They picked us up, got us off the road and into a nearby hut.

It turned out we had crashed near the outskirts of a village and that hut was the house of the local medicine man. He dressed our bruises and gave us tetanus-shots. He charged us some nominal money that was the cost of the injections. Out of gratitude, we handed him a bigger amount but he smilingly refused and returned the balance.

On coming out, I saw the reason for our fall. The road had suddenly narrowed at the point and the left-most lane, which we were riding in had ended in a dead-end with a huge stone placed there. We had hit this stone in the dark.

The people who had picked us off the road were owners and staff of a dhaba which stood just opposite on the other side of the road. We proceeded to thank them and asked them if we could park the Scooty there, as we had finally got some sense into our heads and had decided not to continue on it any further.

They readily agreed. By another stroke of luck, this dhaba turned out to be a halting point for refreshments for all Pondicherry-bound buses. We got onto the next available bus, reached Pondi by 11 pm, checked into the closest hotel and slept, tired and hungry.

Although we had planned to spend two days in Pondi, we had had enough adventure already and decided to return the very next morning. After breakfast, we bought some mithai for our rescuers and got on to the bus for Chennai. Before leaving the dhaba, we had taken a blank cash memo from them so we knew the name of the dhaba and its location. We showed it to the conductor and asked to be dropped off there.

On reaching the dhaba, we were secretly relieved to find the Scooty still there exactly as we had left it. We profusely thanked them once again, got on to our vehicle and reached Chennai in broad daylight without any further mishap.

The beauty of this entire incident is that it took place without any verbal communication -- Samik and I did not know a word of Tamil and our rescuers understood neither Hindi nor English.

It was one human being helping another in need and any speech would have been unnecessary and redundant in the situation. I was overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness that our benefactors and God had shown to a pair of bumbling idiots. I have since returned to Delhi, but that cash memo is still with me and I hope to visit them once again.

Reader Sumana Mishra shares her story:

Once after work, I visited Neelam Didi who works in the IAF because she was feeling down and depressed. Without realising, I spent a lot of time at her place and by the time I left it was past nine in the night. She suggested I spend the night there but I wanted to get back home to my parents in Gurgaon. As I stepped out I realised there was no public transport available. I stood there wondering what to do and reprimanding myself for spending so much time there.

Out of nowhere a black car pulled over. A man dressed as a driver said he knew I wanted to go to Palam Vihar and that he was driving till Bijwasan (which is about 5 km from my place).

I hesitated and asked him how I could rely on him. He assured me that he'd drop me home safely and that there was no way I could get any form of public transport at the time. Then he mentioned that he had seen me and turned around from the next red light.

At a distance, I could see another man approaching us. I was beginning to get a little scared now. He mentioned that he too wanted to visit Bijwasan and asked if he could hitch a ride too.

The driver turned him down and asked me to hop in. I followed his instructions and we drove off.  The window was closed and I was really afraid. In fact I did not even look in his direction.

Later I asked him why he'd refused to give the other guy a lift. He said that he had seen me taking public transport and said he stayed at Bijwasan.

I kept talking to myself in my head to reassure myself that everything will be fine when he said that he wouldn't mind taking a detour and dropping me to my place. I thanked him. We reached home and I invited him over. He refused and said he needed to go.

I lived at Palam Vihar for five more years before moving on. But that was the first and the last time I ever saw him.

Sameer Naik tells us how a stranger stood by him for almost five hours and helped him get back on the road.

I was travelling from Harihar (Karnataka) to Goa in my Maruti 800 with my wife and son who was just a year old then. We had left Harihar around 6 in morning keeping in mind the distance. We took the left turn towards Goa bypassing Hubli, paid the toll and must have travelled around 30 km when my car engine came to a sudden halt.

I tried to restart it but it did not start. I checked my cell phone but there was no network coverage as well. I got out of the car and looked around it was around about 9:30 am and I was standing in midst of a thick jungle! I tried stopping a few vehicles but no one came to my rescue.

Then a gentleman drove past us on a bike and asked what was wrong. He told me his name was Vasant and that he worked with Hyundai and took me to the nearest village mechanic. The fellow could not figure out what was wrong so we went back to the village and got another mechanic.

So now we were four of us looking at what went wrong with the car -- the two mechanics, Vasant and me.

Finally the new mechanic figured out what was wrong and fixed the problem. Knowing my desperation he asked for a lot of money in return. Vasant intervened and I paid the mechanic what was due to him. It was five hours since the car broke down but Vasant stood by us all along.

We are no longer in touch but I am sure somewhere he must be helping other people in distress like he helped me.