It is school exam week. That means I hurry home at soon as I can so that I can reach home in time to spend a good one hour or so on revisions with the kids. That means I brave the KL rush hour traffic alone as Rudy would have one activity or the other to attend to in the evening. Yesterday, he had his French classes at L'aaliance Francaise.
It was 6.58pm. It was the usual Thursday night crawl as I left Jalan Parlimen to make my way into Jalan Duta. Bumper to bumper.
Suddenly the radio petered out. The lights started blinking. I had a sinking feeling I had long forgotten and a glimpse of the fading lights on the dashboard. The car sputtered, jerked and finally stopped.
I panicked. Then took a deep breath. Put on the hazard lights. And dialled the hand-phone for Rudi [what did people do in this situation before hand-phones existed?] As the phone rang, I looked out my window and saw the face of an old friend, Mr Sani Mah waving frantically at me! He had just left the Lake Club when he saw my black Savvy sandwiched between a sea of assorted vehicles. I must admit it was quite scary.
Mr Mah stopped his car. Thankfully, two others stopped by too and helped pushed the car to a safer area within the red divider area that separated Jalan Duta and Mahameru. Streaks of lightning followed by thunder announced the KL's signature heavy rain.
Rudi took 15 minutes to arrive in our NAZA - amazing on the jam-packed road. His collagues from MAA arrived 2 minutes later in their repair truck and opened their bonnet over the Savvy's engine. After trying out various measures, they concluded that the car would have to be towed away for now.
I thanked Mr Mah - if it were not for him I would have been much more a wreck rather than the calm person I was, and he went on his way.
The tow truck arrived a good 20 minutes later from Jinjang - so Rudi and I kept calm by reading each other the papers and listening to the radio. Somehow, we managed to ignore the humdrum of cars outside.
As we headed home for the night, I thought to myself, that wasn't too bad...and thanked God that all ended on a good note.
Arrived home to see all homework by Irani, Ilena and Ikesha carefully laid out on the dining table for me to check.
The little pleasures of life make everything worthwhile and the difficulties - bearable.
1 comment:
Ninotaziz
You have described very familiar scene. I dread that Jalan Duta Road today. Forty years ago it was a pleasure the get into that very road daily. How time has changed. It is not just that I am getting old, I reminisce. And today I feel sorry for one of our children doing that road morning and evening, well past late afternoon, expecting to avoind the procession!
Pakcik
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