What would you do when you are stuck on a highway with a flat tire? If you have been in situations like this before, you will probably say- "Why does this happen to me always?" and if you've never been in these situations, you would panic like me. And what would be your reactions when you finally have everything in place but the jack-screw is broken? I know, I know. Anger would not know its bounds.
Waiting for friends to arrive can be very boring of course when the temperature is as low as -5 degrees. But, if you have a camera handy, then you might as well do some photo-shoot. And that's what we did. And of course, we got strange looks from people passing by, but they were too fast to realize we were just being silly.
With banners saying "Our protests will continue" and "Fulfill our demands," we definitely had our shares of fun. Albeit little cold, it didn't stop us from taking pictures with different poses. This incident taught us two important things: to be patient and to take the most of the situations which I hope we did to its best. Emergency lane on the highway for almost 4 hrs was really scary too. The cars, trucks running on the highway (the speed limit was 55mph) seem to be running way faster. We got scared multiple times when 18-wheeler would run on the right lane next to us. But, at the end of the day we had an album worth of pictures, and memory worth of experiences.
Thanks to the help from our dearest friends Deepak Baral and Dev Gurung. This experience would not have been complete without a silly mistake from Dev to lock himself out of his car once we had the spare tire fixed. We then had to wait for next couple of hours for his insurance to arrive and let him in. Then, again in the cold January afternoon. There is a piece coming soon, written by Sudeep Bhattarai where he describes the day from his angle, the background behind, and its consequences. Stay tuned my friends.
Never give up in life. Always cherish the moments as they happen. Every moment in life in precious.
Best,
Bishal Paudel
Vanderbilt University
2 comments:
you should have ask for help from the blondes :) nice piece... but what was the protest for.. or what does it symbolize? the wind pressure you get due to 18 wheeler passing by is really frightening.. for a sec it feels like as if the car is going to fly.
Should have, only if we could figure out which cars blondes were driving. The protest was against modernism. Lol. It was just another means of us trying to become occupied before our friends reached us. Overall, good experience though, learnt few things.
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