All you could hear was:
“Where’s the hair dryer? Where is the hair straightener? Where’s my rubber band?”
Once again, I had got up the latest and was the first one to get ready. Any minutes now they would start asking me to do their “odd jobs”. Once everyone was ready, we took some photographs of each other and then we were off. I always hated going to religious part of the wedding due to the fact you had to sit down for a couple of hours and get bored, which I did. The religious part of the wedding was taking part upstairs and the party was going to take place in the hall downstairs in the evening. I sat down upstairs watching the ceremony for about half an hour and I could not tolerate it any longer. Sitting crossed legged on the floor for a long time along without getting up in the morning was another thing which I disliked a large deal. I went downstairs and there were a couple of people, mainly youngsters like me who probably could not hack sitting down on the floor for long periods of time. I roamed around for about half an hour and people started to come down, the ceremony was finally over.
We went back to my cousin’s house which was a half hour drive from the location because the party was to be held later on that night. Everyone had gotten ready again, because you change your outfit for the party and as usual I was the first to be ready. I walked out the house, the moon was shining brightly. The light from the moon bounced of the bare branches of the naked trees, the wind was howling at my feet. As I looked on, I was swamped by a sea of dancing leaves along the drive. What a night I thought to myself, it was like a scene out of a horror film where something bad was going to happen next. The irony in that was I did not know what was going to happen later on that evening.
“Rajdeep you get in the Jeep with Mandeep, Rupi, Reena, Meena and Melissa”,
it was my mum. Reena is my sister, Meena and Rupi are my cousin sisters, Mandeep is my cousin brother (also Rupi’s brother) and Melissa is his fiancée. We set off and arrived at the party and everyone was there, the atmosphere was electrical. I danced all night, I can not say much about my Canadian cousins, either they were shy or they did not like to dance. Especially my cousin Parm (Mandeep’s older brother), who had ten bear cans and said he needed another five to get him drunk enough to dance. However, he did not get the chance because we had to leave.
We all set of at the same time and we all sat in the same vehicles. We had to drop of by Melissa’s house first because she needed some night clothing because she was going to stay around with us. Once she had got her clothes we set off to go back home. However, Mandeep did not eat at the party so he wanted to stop somewhere and eat. Most of the shops were closed which was obvious because it was one in the morning. So we stopped at Subway and just got some snacks and we then hit the motorway (or what the Canadians call it “the freeway”). There were no lights on the dual carriage freeway. It was very different to motorways in England. There was a hilly area with trees all along the right hand side of us. And on the left, there were trees and shrubs as well as a ditch which ran along the length of carriage way, separating us from the carriage way on our left.
I sat at the back on the left and with Reena, Meena and Melissa. At the front, Rupi was driving and Mandeep sat in the passenger seat. I sat there feeling very sleepy, I kept dozing off occasionally, however I tried to stay away. This is because I never go to sleep on car journeys simply because I believe if I go to sleep I will never wake up again. This was very satirical because if I did go to sleep I may have actually died. Everyone was talking quietly amongst themselves. I was just listening to the song that was on, which was “What’s love” by Fat Joe. Then the phone rang Rupi put her foot on the brake for about half a second to get the mobile out her purse and handed it Mandeep to answer.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere a big blue van which was upside down, flew past us from the left and landed in the ditch on our right. Rupi hit the brakes hard. Our car was airborne for about 10 seconds as it went over the trees and other debris, which had been knocked down by the van. All I seem to remember is the frantic screaming and the feeling of terror come over me, as I suddenly came to the realisation that I might not survive. We landed heavily and we hit sum more trees from underneath which made the car go up and down like it had hydraulics which went terribly wrong. Although we had our seatbelts on, it was a rough ride and we’d been jolted around as though we’d been in a roller coaster ride from hell! We finally came to a stop, about hundred and twenty yards away from where the van just missed us. I looked out of the window, the smoke from the engine sent a cold shiver down my spine. As I walked out of the jeep I was blinded by intensity of the headlights from the cars behind us.
We all stood there for a moment reflecting on what had just happened, it had happened all so quickly we were all in a state of shock. We all tried to comfort my cousin who’d been driving, she was going absolutely hysterical, “I nearly killed all of us! Its all my fault!” she kept saying repeatedly. “It’s not your fault” we reassured her “No-one would have expected this. If you hadn’t handled the situation the way you did, none us may have survived.”
I looked at the jeep it was a total right off, all the wheels had broken and the bottom part of the jeep at the back had come off. Everything thing then seemed to go quiet, it was as though someone had pressed the mute button. I started to walk towards the blue van, the road was clear due to the tress but traffic was starting to build up. I was clutching my left elbow while I was walking. A person standing there who helping to clear the trees said to me, “You should get that checked out”. I replied “Yeah”.
As I walked towards the van, each footstep seemed heavier than the last. The light began to become more intense and I looked to my right and there lay the blue van which nearly took my life. I could hear sirens in the distance, which were getting louder and louder it was the police and ambulance. They took our statement and our family came to pick us up to take us home. We had found out by the police that the driver and passenger of the van were drunk and they were travelling in a road in the hills above us on our left. There was a u-turn in the road and instead of turning they drove straight, which was at us. In addition to this the police told us we were lucky were in a jeep if were travelling in a car and we were hit by trees we would have certainly be dead.
We were lucky we did not hit them it and it was all down to Parm who rang us while we were driving. If he did not ring Rupi would not have braked slightly and we would have hit the van. Out of curiosity I will tell you why Parm had rang. He rang because he was going to do a barbecue at one in the morning and he wanted to know how many vegetarian burgers I wanted (because I am vegetarian). So I would say vegetarian burgers and the idea of Parm doing a barbeque saved our lives.
The next day we all had to go to the hospital to be examined. Rupi was injured the most because she hurt her back. She had been in a car accident before which was also not her fault and she had physiotherapy on her back and now she re-hurt her back. Melissa hurt her neck, she slightly crack one of her vertebrates. I dislocated my left elbow the others just suffered minor concussions. Two days later my mum, sister, dad and I flew back to England. Reflecting back on the events I realised how lucky I was to be alive and how important your family is to you.
BY RAJDEEP SINGH SANDHER
