– Amar Bhatkal
This incident happened when I was in the United States of America in June 1998.
It was a long drive from Atlanta to Erie, a distance of a thousand miles. I had planned to drive there in my car and had packed my belongings for a project that was to last several months. I had decided to cover the distance in two days with a nights stay in a wayside hotel. I had not slept very well the previous night due to the anxiety of the journey.
I was able to begin my journey by nine am and I made steady progress covering two hundred miles in the morning before stopping for lunch. The drive had been uneventful and boring as I was alone. After lunch I resumed my journey. I had the music playing; I had activated the cruise control this made long driving on the highway easier. The monotony also made me drowsy. Very soon I dozed off to sleep, at the wheel of my car which was hurtling down the Highway at sixty miles. I was in the right lane (the slower lane) the next thing that happened jolted me out of sleep. I heard a noise exactly like the noise made by a plane just after touch-down. The moment before in air is silk smooth, noiseless and on landing the noise and the accompanying roughness that go with it, is the only way I can describe it. The car had veered to the right on to the stretch that is used for emergency stops.
I instinctively turned the wheel to the left and continued the rest of my journey shaken by my experience but without any further incident.
I have since replayed this incident several times in my mind and To this day I don’t know how I escaped a serious accident. Had I continued a little further, the car would have gone off the road straight into a clump of bushes beyond which there was a drop of several feet. The car could have gone into the left lane on to the fast moving vehicles which would not have been able to avoid a crash or worse still it could have crossed the median at high speed on to the oncoming traffic. I am sure that I was able to get out of this situation without a scratch because of Divine Mother, SHE is always with us protecting us.
Even the hand of destiny can be set aside through faith in God and devotion to Him. – Divine Mother
Jai Mata.