A couple of days I’d mentioned about a strange condition that I’ve been having nowadays, which makes it tough for the erstwhile compulsive multitasker me have trouble in doing more than one thing at a time. Occasionally, I do end up drifting doing two things at a time – such as day dreaming and walking, and occasionally like last evening the effects can be disastrous.
It happened in Gandhinagar. Right in front of the erstwhile Central Jail, now renovated as “Freedom Park”. I was walking towards the bus stop, looking to take a bus to Jayanagar. I had been coming from ‘Majestic’ where I’d gone to put beat. I was looking at the remodelled jail, and wondering at the irony of calling the ex-jail as a freedom park. A Carnatic kRti (by Patlam Subramania Aiyer i think) was playing in my head. I was looking at the various buses trying to figure out where the stop was. I was trying to cross the road. Normally that much of workload, I think, would be very fine.
So I had to get past some stone barriers in order to cross the road to reach the half where there were no vehicles. It was much easier to walk there, I’d thought. I remember looking at the stones and assessing that they were two feet tall. I remember instructing my right leg to go up by that distance and cross the stone. I remember that at the first attempt, my right leg failed to go high enough, and then I had to bark out further instructions. If I remember right, this time around, my leg did go up the requisite height.
The next split-second was a blur for me. I don’t really know what happened, but I conjecture that when I instructed my right leg to adjust, I forgot to ask the left leg to slow down its ascent from the ground. Hence, what happened was that both feet went off the ground at the same time, and since fresh instuctions hadn’t gone out to my left leg, it happened to hit the stone and I tripped, with both my feet off the ground.
When I “regained consciousness” I realized that I was falling, forwards, and that both my feet were off the ground, and that my left foot had hit the stone. I remember putting forward my hands, elbows bent and wrists loose, so that I fell relatively harmlessly on my palms. No one was around, but I managed to quickly gather myself up, and it was then that various parts of my body started talking.
I have a badly sprained left big toe. I’ve twisted my right knee so it’s hard for me to turn while walking. I’ve taken a knock on my left shin (it’s slightly swollen) but it doesn’t hurt much. And my belt buckle broke. I had minor scratches on my right palm but they don’t hurt anymore.
Nothing is bad enough that I’ve to go to the doctor. But both legs hurt occasionally. Fallout of this is that i’m now afraid of walking. It’s funny. I’ve been walking so slowly today. I’m afraid of twisting my already twisted right knee further. Injury to left big toe means I don’t want to put much pressure on it.
I’m sure that if I make an attempt, I should be able to walk normally. But legs aren’t listening. They are too sceptical of injuring themselves further. I haven’t even started driving (either car or bike) yet. Hopefully things will heal soon.
Last night my twitter status was “had an occident this evening, and is now feeling all disoriented”