Laws of Motion

Most of us have heard or read about Newton’s laws of motion. It is amazing the number of times these work in our lives everyday and we never notice. But sometimes it becomes very hard to ignore them staring at us. Continuing on the same theme from the first post, I am going to share another major accident in my life.

The year was 2001, I was in 11th grade, and like many students, I was attending coaching classes. The physics coaching used to take place early in the morning at 5:30. I would go to the coaching, come back home, then get ready and go to school. I used to go to physics coaching with my friend, who lived next door and it was my duty to make sure he doesn’t miss coaching.

The coaching was about 3 miles from my house, and we would take my Kinetic Honda(a two stroke scooter with continuously variable transmission and electric start). One fine chilly morning, sometime in October or November, I got up, got ready for coaching, and then proceeded to wake my friend up. We left home with enough time to spare, and reached our destination pretty early. Since days were becoming colder with the onset of winters, everyone used to show up just two minutes before the scheduled time. And here we were, a full 15 minutes ahead of time. Finding no one outside the coaching, we decided to take the scooter for another spin to kill time.

I feel this is the right time to add some color to our circumstances. It was 5:15am, pitch dark, cold and the headlight of the scooter was not working. Also, in India, back in those days, we used to have scheduled power cuts. So at this hour, power was out and street lights weren’t functional. But why would any of this matter to two high school boys. We left the coaching centre, I was driving, my friend behind me. We were going at a decent speed, enjoying the cold breeze, we were singing a song something like Lak Tunu Tunu, and my friend jumped continuously on his seat with the tune, testing the shockers. All in all, we were just having the best times of our lives.

We went for a mile, made a u-turn and started heading back towards the coaching. In this pitch dark, I suddenly saw a figure in front of me. I was able to identify that this figure was a buffalo, standing in the middle of the road at an angle. And that is all I was able to do in the 2 seconds I got between seeing this figure and crashing into it. As it happens in movies, things started happening in slow motion. Since the buffalo was standing at an angle, the right side of the handle rammed into it and turned sharply on impact. My friend got booted out of the scooter and I could see him flying backwards. I was still holding on to the handle, but the scooter went down, so did I, and I started skidding on the road with the scooter. At some point, I let go of the scooter, and after a few yards I stopped rolling and skidding and so did the scooter.

An object at rest remains at rest, or if in motion, remains in motion at a constant velocity unless acted on by a net external force. This is Newton’s first law of motion, and it hit us like a ton of bricks. Many more laws and theorems worked in tandem and physics was flowing like poetry in motion.

Knowing this was one of the main roads for heavy transportation in and out of the city, there was a high chance a truck might not be far behind. As soon as I stopped skidding, I got up immediately, noticed my friend was sitting on the side of the road and a truck was approaching me from some distance. I started running towards the scooter, picked it up from the middle of the road and moved it to the side. It had scratches and broken parts. In the meanwhile I could see my friend was limping slowly towards me, bleeding from his knee.

We collected ourselves and made the obvious call to head back home. By this time, we had a bit more daylight than we had 10 minutes ago. I started the scooter, helped my friend get on it and started driving. The beautiful cold breeze started working again, and I felt this sharp pain and burning sensation on my arms. It felt as if someone was cutting and burning both the arms at the same time. I was bleeding around my elbows on both the arms and the wind was amplifying the pain. Both my elbows got injured, all 360 degrees while I skidded and rolled many times on the road. I got a few more injuries here and there, but these were the winners.

Somehow we made it home and everyone was still asleep. I picked up my first aid kit and headed to the roof. We both administered first aid to each other - cleaned up the injuries, applied ointment and wrapped bandages. An hour or so later, when my parents woke up, they were introduced to the mess. My dad took both of us to a doctor for real medical care. This is when we learned how we had messed up the bandage. We applied cotton directly to the injuries and it was stuck to skin pretty well by now. There was no other option, we had to bear the pain while the doctor applied brutal force to remove the cotton, put an ointment which felt like pouring hot lava on skin, and did an actual bandage.

We would get new dressing done every day. Even with good bandages, they would stick to the skin and had to be taken off forcefully. With bandages on both the arms, I couldn’t fold them. So I would walk like a zombie and my friend would limp since he got hit worse on his knee. This lasted for more than a month.

Almost 20 years later, I still have marks on my elbows from this accident. And pretty well etched in my memory. Since that day, we have never sung that forbidden song, especially when we are together.