The moment of Pain

Few days back I was at Thirunarayanapuram to witness a mega event, Vairamudi – the festive of adorning the deity with all precious diamonds studded crown. Lakh of people churn out on that particular day every year. I was part of the center of gravity as I was lifting the palanquin of the deity. Crowd was thronging on us. There was a metal barricade attached with iron wheels moving around the deity, to ward of the crowd and disallowing them to near the deity. Since there were crowd standing at both the sides of the streets, the practice was to sway the palanquin on all the sides so that people had a closer look at the crowned deity. Suddenly the crowed squeezed in at us at and lessened the gaps of the barricade. As I was at the edge of the palanquin, one of the wheels of the barricade ran over my left foot and split the skin. While the wheel was still on my foot for few seconds, I could not remove it. I also feared that it would damage my foot if I try to pull it out. The barricade was at least ten times heavier than me. My cry went unnoticed as the place was earsplitting. After few seconds the barricade moved ahead and I had my leg released. For a moment I felt giddy and cried for help. My cousin on the other side felt something wrong with me and steered through the crowed to come up to me. All that I knew was I couldn’t walk. But it was impossible to stay back at that place with increasing pain and fear of people stamping on the same foot again. Holding my cousins shoulder we somehow made it away from the crowd to see my skin on the foot cut into two halves and blood oozing everywhere from my foot. The pain was horrible. Leg swollen and made it impossible for me to move. After a first aid we moved back into the hotel room and I took rest until next day we got back to Chennai. The wound was badly infected as I had to walk back long way to the hotel room with the open cut. It took almost 20 days for the new skin to patch up and for me to move my leg freely. Now my foot had a permanent mark of the cut and looks like marks of stitches post operation. All this was not all that painful.
Someone whom I consider loves me the most, did not even bother at this mercy sight while I expected the person to caringly caress it and say an ‘achocho’. That was horribly painful.