Sixteen years back, when I had a heart attack and two stents had to be inserted to help me survive, doctors had warned my family members to prevent me from driving. "If he has an accident, he could die", they told my son. Since then, I've had a driver, even though I kept on driving.
Last Saturday, I and my wife had been invited to a wedding dinner. Although I had stopped going to such events because it meant returning home an hour after midnight (criminals in Karachi being very active nowadays), I decided to go. I let the driver go home because I didn't want him to get tired (he'd been working since seven o'clock in the morning). I felt confident that I'd be able to drive safely. I didn't know that it would be foggy and it would affect my vision.
Just outside my apartment complex, the DHA has placed huge concrete blocks in the middle of the road in a zig zag manner to deter people from driving rashly. If it had been a clear night, I'd have seen the boulders and avoided them. Unfortunately I didn't see the boulders as I was trying to remove the dew on the windscreen.
It's been five days since the accident (my car was badly damaged), but I still keep thinking about the accident and the noise it made. It has affected me so much that I need pain killers and sleeping pills to survive.
Of course the fault was mine and mine alone. I should never have taken the decision to drive, but as in the past few months I had driven a couple of times without mishap, I thought I could do it again. We were lucky that we didn't get hurt. In any event, I've decided never to drive at night, even if the weather is fine.
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