A Cut Above. . . Err Below

It was just another noisy evening. The school had just left, so there were children wearing school uniforms (checkered red color) all over the place. It must seem like an army of ants from above. Some walking home, some boarding the school bus, some had their parents waiting for them. I was standing outside my school near my auto-rickshaw (I used to travel to school in an assigned auto-rickshaw of Manish Uncle), waiting for other schoolmates who used to travel with me from the same medium.

Just then, suddenly I felt a hard slap on my back. When I turned around, I saw a classmate of mine(lets call him Abhi, not his real name) was running away. My temper shot up high and ran after him. In the process I tripped over something and fell on the ground. Abhi had got away, laying there I was cribbing about the fact that I couldn’t catch him, when suddenly someone came and picked me up. As soon as I was picked up, I looked down at my ankle to find a cut in my flesh. My right boot was filled with my blood(it was raining season and I was wearing those shoes without less, also I wasn’t wearing any socks). Looking at that I started crying(what do you expect? I was a kid). I had not exactly tripped, there was a partially cracked sewage lid made of tin. It was rusted. So when I stepped on it, it broke open and I tripped. As I was running, due to the forward push my right ankle was partially slit by the rusted tin.

This is the kind of sewage lid I am talking about. Only the one I tripped on was thinner, cracked and rusted

Then Manish uncle rushed in tied his handkerchief around my shin to reduce the blood flow. He took me inside the school expecting for help, but to his disappointment the school staff declined to help, saying the accident occurred outside school premises. Then Manish uncle rushed to the nearby hospital. All this while he was carrying me around and I was crying at a noticeable volume. Then a guy living in my building(Peeush) was sent to inform my mother of the event.

After a while mom came to hospital. She was in tears as well looking at me and my injury. It took a good seven stitches to zip the cut in my right ankle, which showed a slight glimpse of my bone from within. But, apocalypse occurred before the stitching process. A eleven year boy was injected with an anesthetic needle, just beside the split in his ankle. I screamed to the top of my voice while mom and a nurse held me in place. The stitching was done in front of my eyes, while I was sitting upright. Although, I was given anesthesia, I could still feel the needle poking into my skin, the thread running through the hole poked by the needle, only I did not feel pain this time. It may sound stupid, but I actually enjoyed this. Later, my leg was bandaged and I went home.

The school did not feel my presence for a good two moths after this event. I heard from someone that Abhi had got a good pasting from our teacher during my absence. On my return, I saw the tin sewage lid replaced by a three inch thick cement lid.

After those two months, I remember myself bragging to friends about the seven stitches, showing the mark on my ankle.

The Stitch mark is shown with a red circle around it.

Its during the stitching process that a thought was running through my mind. I said to myself, “Some day you will laugh about it”. And quit frankly, I do. Even while writing this experience I was laughing about all that happened that day.