Hot wheels

Have you ever been in an accident? Many of you have I guess, at some stage of life, witnessed a ghastly accident. But how many of you were actually were a victim of one and lived to tell the tale?
Well I have.
Kerala has one of the highest average annual injury and death rates in correlation to it's population, perhaps next only to Maharashtra. But Maharashtra is a heavily industrialized state with a corresponding high figure of vehicles on the road. So why Kerala? Food for thought for a demographer. I am digressing from my tale.
I was in Maharashtra in a rural village studying my degree course, returning home in the company sponsored college vehicle that did trips from our colony to the city college and back. The weather was cool for an unusually hot summer. The driver, a hefty man with a huge veerappan moustache was cracking jokes in between pan chewing, spitting and deep laughter, and seemed to be in a generally jolly mood.
Suddenly a tipper lorry approached head on narrowly missing collision. In his confusion, Veerappan moustache sharply swerved left and lost control of the vehicle as the bus slid down the road embankment and continued sliding till it came to rest on its side in a marshy ditch which still had some water from unseasonal rains.
All of us were thrown bodily from our seats to the side on which the bus had come to rest blocking all exits.
Pandemonium broke out within. Some women and little kids shrieked; there were moans and somebody shouted to keep calm. My friend Ajay, reached the rear end of the vehicle and broke open the rear glass pane that had on it painted in large letters "EMERGENCY EXIT". That was cool of him I think, considering the circumstances. All the passengers in the nearly half filled bus made our way out.
Out of the mess, we looked at each other.
I have a deep intuition that in a life and death situation, one always searches for someone he/she holds really true to his/her heart which he/she would not normally express. And I found that I was eyeball-to-eyeball with this cute little college classmate on whom I had a deep crush but was wary of expressing. Was that a proof of some tender feelings?
Someone made a head count and we were relieved that no one was hurt except for a few scratches and one person with a minor injury that had let out a little blood, nothing more serious.
Soon replacement vehicles arrived and ferried us back to the colony and home.
As soon as I reached, I went off to buy a pack of cigarettes and with shaky hands took a few drags at the cigarette.
I wondered what would happen to the driver? Would he get fired for his shoddy driving? Unlikely, coz he was the protege of a worker union leader.
But we noticed something the next day.
The same driver was on his seat the next day, but minus the veerappan moustache. Some sacrifice!!