THE DAY I KILLED A MAN

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In those days I worked for evangelical missions in the districts of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri. On a rest day, two companions from the next mission center proposed to go on a ride to a riverside tea estate about sixty kilometers west from our station. Four of us rode on two Royal Enfield 350 cc Bullet motorcycles. About half way we visited St. Ann's Sisters. The good nuns offered us a simple lunch of rice and some vegetable. We resumed our journey after the meal. We had not been twenty minutes from the convent when something strange happened! Next moment, I found myself lying on my back beside the highway and the Bullet on its side. It took no time for me to guess that something untoward had happened. But how, I couldn't remember. There was no memory of any collision or of being hit by any vehicle in my mind. It was a freak accident! I was told that I had dashed a Nepali speaking middle-aged man in the course of the accident. A police jeep carried both of us to the local rural hospital for first aid and then to the better equipped District Medical College Hospital. All the way the poor injured man was painfully groaning and my head was reeling with a large wound on my cheek, with a few broken teeth and a fracture on my right temple. As soon as the jeep reached the hospital both of us were taken in by the hospital staff. After one night in the hospital, I was shifted to a private nursing home for better care. After I was out of the nursing home I was told by my friends that the unfortunate man had breathed his last before we had reached the Medical College Hospital. Though the mishap took place before the turn of the century, I can't forget that a man had lost his life at my hand!