Ganesh, oddly enough, occupies a rather special place in my own (admittedly small) personal pantheon...
<settles into 'Jackanory' mode>
I first visited India in 1997 with my partner, and had my first contact with the vast, technicolour delight that is Hinduism. I loved the myriad representations of the various Gods and Goddesses, particularly the sub-continent's most popular deity, Ganesh. By the time we returned to the UK, I'd collected hundreds of those wonderfully gaudy postcards which one sees everywhere in India, the cheapest of personal shrines.
Fast forward to the following November. I'd reluctantly accepted a six-month post in Livingston, a concrete shithole midway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. I say "reluctantly" because, although I have my driving license, I detest driving and had (at that point) never owned a car. In any case, a particularly inflexible medical training supervisor refused to allow me to swap my placement, so I had to buy a car.
So there I was, driving out to do my on-call one bright and frosty Sunday morning. There'd been a "cold snap" overnight but the sun seemed to have melted much of the ice, and the roads looked okay. I took the A40, a road I was used to.
I'd just passed through Balerno and returned to a "national speed limit" zone, putting my foot down on the accelerator and was doing around forty mph when I hit a patch of black ice. The car suddenly spun off towards the wrong side of the road, I did all the stuff you're supposed to (steer into the skid, pump the brake, etc.) and the car returned to the correct lane...
... but kept on going. I went right off the road, and crashed through some trees. The windscreen shattered but didn't fall in. I tumbled down a sort of embankment and the left wheel went over a fallen tree trunk, tipping the car over. It rolled once then came to a halt - upside-down.
My life didn't flash in front of my eyes; it was all too fast for that. I didn't even think "I'm gonna die"; it was more "This is gonna hurt". I had my arms braced against the steering wheel and I think I closed my eyes. I had the overwhelming sense that a tree branch was going to burst through the windscreen and hit me in the face. Luckily for my face, that didn't happen.
The passenger side was completely stoved in. Hanging from the seat-belt, the radio (playing All Saints' 'War of Nerves', I can clearly remember) seemed suddenly incredibly loud. I reached out and switched it off. Crisp packets and other car-floor rubbish fell around my ears and I thought incongruously, "Fuck, the emergency services are gonna think I'm such an untidy bastard". Then clear fluid (brake fluid, I later realised) started dripping down (I still hadn't turned off the engine at this point) and I wondered idly whether cars only blew up in the movies...
Another driver had been a few hundred feet behind me on the road, and helped me out the car window (the door wouldn't open). I remember systematically checking myself for fractures, cuts, bruises, whiplash. I was completely unharmed. The car, on the other hand, was written off. I'd only just missed an enormous fucking tree stump which, if I'd hit it square on, would've driven the front of the car into my ribcage and abdomen. After a few minutes, I started to laugh (frightening the hell out of my "rescuer") and had to sit down. The police, when they arrived, helpfully pointed out that I was lucky to be alive.
Next day, my mother drove me back to the site of the crash (not sure why, but I wanted to see it again). The wreck had been towed away and a few sad little bits and pieces lay by the roadside: a wing mirror, a Volkswagen hubcap and a rain-sodden postcard of Ganesh, Remover of Obstacles...
Okay, so I quite possibly owe my life to German engineering rather than a Hindu Lovegod, but I think that's when I first started to believe in magic. A little bit. I've felt warm and snuggly towards Ganesh ever since.
[ 03-01-2002: Message edited by: Ganesh v4.2 ] |
