Extrasensory scare

The children and I were fast asleep, when suddenly my 10-year-old daughter sat up in bed, pointed her hand at the blank wall in front and said in a loud, urgent voice, “Look, look, look; an accident, an accident but Achan is alright.” ‘Achan’ is what the children call their father in Malayalam. He had gone to our hometown on government work and was returning to Delhi. We were in Cochin as it was holidays for the children. He had left early morning for Chennai on his way to Delhi. In fact, he must have reached Delhi by that time and might have been on his way home.

When I heard these words, I was petrified. I noted the time and found it was just 11.30 pm. I sat up in bed and gently pulled her back on to the pillow. “Of course, your father is alright,” I said.  “Go back to sleep. I will say our bedtime prayers again.” Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be asleep already. But sleep was far away for me. I could not believe the girl had said those words. Did her words presage any danger? I, too, prayed and reassured myself that it was just a nightmare; I tossed and turned for sometime till I fell asleep.

In the morning, bright sunlight dispelled anxiety but I was to get a shock later in the day. My husband rang up in the afternoon and said there had been a bad accident on the way home from the airport the night before. “Two reckless young boys coming from the opposite side on a motorbike crossed over the road divider and crashed into the car I was going in. I got out and almost stepped on one boy who was lifeless. The other was badly hurt but alive. The driver of the government car was slumped on the steering wheel unconscious.”

My husband tried to wave down the speeding cars but, of course, none would stop. Finally, one man stopped his car and asked if he could help. My husband told him that he was a police officer and asked if he could be dropped off at the nearest police outpost. Once there, he explained the situation and asked his office to send an ambulance to the scene of accident and a car to drop him home. He waited till the ambulance arrived and took the boys and the driver, who was still unconscious, to the hospital.

Formalities over, he went home. Since my husband had been sitting on the left side of the back seat nothing had happened to him. He had noted the time of the accident in his mind. When he finally called me the next day, I was so scared that I had made him repeat twice that he was alright. Then I told him what had happened back at home.

My husband was also surprised, especially when we found out that it was the exact time when the accident occurred that our daughter had sat up in bed and said those frightening words.  It was a case of Extrasensory Perception or ESP, when one experiences something independent of the 5 senses.

We did not tell our daughter about this incident and what she had said for years, till she had grown up. The driver recovered but, sadly, the two boys died. What prompted those boys to take such a foolhardy step was not known. We could only thank god for my husband’s safety and pray for the families of the two boys.