Continued from Part 1
Meanwhile a gleeful looking man from a nearby village was ecstatic about how nothing like this ever happened near his village. I could imagine Mr.Gleeful till the day of death will tell his children and grand children of his experiences.
I left Niwas and the Production Manager Giri to attend to the rest and along with a unit member on the directions of Mr.Needful I started walking towards a jeep to take me to a nearby town Guntur. As I was walking many officers and passengers who recognized me were greeting me and treating me with great respect. I reached the jeep, got in and told the driver to move. He gave me one dirty look and pointed to the wheel which was stuck in the mud and then he went off on a long barrage of expletives cursing the officers for not listening to him when he predicted that the jeep will get stuck. He was least bothered about me or the accident. So I had no choice but to trudge through the paddy field along with some unit members towards a nearby village from which I presumed Mr.Gleeful came from. After I walked a certain distance to the village I turned back to see the train on its side and there was a tree on the right between the train and me. I wished that it was a little to the left so that the visual would have looked better (Hello! Remember my disease of living in a state of filmdom?)
Once we reached the village there were some vehicles. Nagarjuna's family friend from Guntur took me into his vehicle and drove me to his home. He was hospitality personified and apparently a huge fan of mine and was in awe of me. As I got down in front of his home, I was unbelievably dirty, both my clothes and feet. Even as I asked for water to wash my feet Mr.Hospitality insisted I come in. So I went in to face a woman who couldn't control her anger looking at the dirt on my feet. Mr.Hospitality introduced her as his wife and she took off on him on why he couldn't get my feet washed outside to which he screamed at her saying 'Do you know who he is?' to which I volunteered to go out to which she said 'What's the point now as you already made the floor dirty.' Now Mr.Hospitality wanted me to sit on the sofa and from the look in her eyes I knew that both me and Mr.Hospitality were in mortal danger if anything even near to that happens. I stomped my feet down literally and said I am not doing anything except for cleaning myself up.
Once I got cleaned I shifted to a nearby Hotel where most people from the accident were put up. Niwas called me and told that Murthy stopped speaking. Both of us remained silent and did not speak about the 'death' word.
The S5 coach was mangled and they had to cut the top open. Now it so happened that Vidya was right below the roof as he was on the upper berth. So in the process of cutting the roof, his face got completely burnt from the heat of the welding torch. Whether he died before itself or during this process is anybody's guess.
My cousin en-route from Mumbai called me and said Vidya's father was coming and I have to break the news to him about his son's death. His father was only told that Vidya is injured. I felt terrible that I am meeting this man for the first time in my life and the first thing I have to speak to him is that his son is dead. I confided about this to a relative of mine Pandu, who came to see me there, to which he said not to worry and he will take care of that. I wondered how he will do that.
When Vidya's father walked in looking at me very fearfully not knowing what to expect Pandu sharply slapped his back from behind and said in a tone of loud cheerful happiness 'Your son is very lucky. God loves him and took him away. We all are bastards and I don't know when we will get that lucky'. I was shocked at the way Pandu broke the news. The effect on Vidya's father was mesmeric. He was startled both with the news and the way it was told to him. My first reaction was that it was very insensitive on Pandu's part but on second thoughts I thought it was the most perfect way of breaking the news in that situation. Pandu went on a barrage of advantages, incidents and anecdotes about God and His ways not giving thinking and feeling time to Vidya's father. Pandu was instinctive but I think he was more a philosopher and psychiatrist than anybody I met.
Later I sat with Vidya's father and gave a long talk to him on why he should not show Vidya's body in the state of his burnt face to his mother. I said 'let her remember him the way he was', to which he countered how he cannot do that as he is her only son to which I was getting angry more with the fact that my logic was not being listened to.
However by the time he reached his place along with the body, my cousin called me and told me that Vidya's father decided to go by my advice and got the cremation done without the mother seeing Vidya's face. I felt triumphant of my counselling power.
Anyway after the entire experience the one truth I realized for myself is that 'life is really a comedy which pretends to be a tragedy".
By Ram Gopal Varma
