Sundar opened his eyes and looked around. He couldn’t see much and tried to focus hard. He felt a sharp pain in his head. He was dazed and didn’t dare move as he felt a sharp pain in his head every time he even tried to move. He tried to focus on the surroundings, but all he could see was darkness. There was an occasional spark of light but instead of hope, it was more ominous. He put his head back and closed his eyes.

Ankitha didn’t mind the position she was in. She lay sprawled on the floor. Her head was throbbing as if she hit it against something hard. The pain she felt was severe, but the physical pain she felt was nothing compared to how broken she was inside. She didn’t want to live anymore and welcomed this situation. She closed her eyes and wished she didn’t wake up again.

Subbu wanted to shout aloud. But he couldn’t. His voice seemed to have failed him. He had read that certain types of shocks paralysed people. This seemed to be one such. He couldn’t shout aloud. He wanted help. He needed people around. But he felt none. He didn’t hear any sound. Subbu tried to shout again, but his voice failed him. He cried inside and closed his eyes shut.

Hari didn’t like the unpredictable. He always lived by a calendar and was an expert planner. He always liked surety in things. He didn’t like surprises even on his birthday. His family and friends always ensured he knew everything that was planned. The entire birthday would get ruined if there was even a small surprise element. He took pride in being in control of his life. He knew what was going to happen every day and every minute. Until now. This situation was unpredictable. He didn’t like it. This wasn’t how he preferred it. He wasn’t in his comfort zone of being in control. He closed his eyes in the hope that this was a dream.

Hari opened his eyes a few seconds later. He was still in the same place. Lying down in a crooked position in a bus that was now upside down in a gorge. He knew he was lucky to be still alive, but it was not his choice. He didn’t have control. Damn the accident, he cursed inside. He didn’t know how long he had been in this position. He assumed he had passed out of shock during the accident and the bus falling into the gorge. But now he was up and in his senses. He felt a throbbing in his head but that can wait. Now he needed to take back control of his life.

 “I am Hari” asked Hari. “Can anyone hear me?”

 “I am here near the front side of the bus. A severe pain in my head but I am ok. I am Sundar.” said Sundar.

 “I am here as well. My name is Ankitha. I don’t remember much, but I am sprawled around the middle of the bus. That’s where my seat was if I remember correctly. Is it just the three of us? Or are there more?”

 “ummmm uhmmmm uhmmmmm….” That’s all Subbu could manage, but suddenly he found his voice. “I am Subbu. I am here as well by the rear side window.”

“So that makes it four of us. Is there anyone else here? I suggest you all call out as well which might elicit a response from someone else who is alive and fainted.” shouted Hari again.

The four of them kept shouting for anyone else who might be alive. After a few minutes, they realised they were the only ones. Anyone else on the bus was dead. Ankitha shivered internally at the thought that she might be lying next to a few dead bodies. She felt nauseous at the thought and with a lot of effort suppressed the bile that rose from her stomach to her throat.

“Are any of you seriously hurt? I am ok but for a pain in my head,” said Hari.

“I couldn’t find my voice a few minutes back. I am ok but in shock,” said Subbu.

 “I feel beaten black and blue but don’t have any broken bones,” said Ankitha

 “I am ok too but for a terrible pain in my head. I seem to have hit it hard, but no blood that I can sense,” said Sundar.

 “Good that none of us are seriously hurt. I am not sure how far we are down the gorge. The bus is upside down and is currently on firm ground. But we can’t be sure of it. So don’t make any sudden movements.” said Hari. “Also can you check your mobile phones for signal? Mine was out of charge even when the bus was moving.”

 “I can’t find my phone. Mine is broken. “I don’t use one,” said three different voices.

 “A phone flashlight would help us get a bearing on the surroundings,” said Hari.

 “Help should be on the way soon. Such a big bus crash would have attracted a lot of attention on the highway. I am sure police, fire service, and ambulance are on the way to rescue us,” said Subbu optimistically.

 “We fell quite a way down the mountain. So I am not sure how easy it would be for the rescue team to reach us soon,” said Sundar’s voice. “And not to forget the wild animal or snakes which might get to us faster in this jungle.”

 “I am scared of snakes,” shrieked Subbu.

 “Those reptiles are better than some human snakes,” said Ankitha ruefully.

 That comment made everyone go silent. It wasn’t a normal comment to make that too in such a situation. They had all escaped death just a little while ago but none of them seemed to be rejoicing that fact.

 An eerie silence engulfed the bus as everyone was lost in their thoughts.

 Subbu

Coming from humble beginnings, Subbu was a simpleton from the time he was a child. His brothers and friends always used to get the better of him. He used to get the most damaged mango when they stole mangoes from the tree, he used to get the last batting when playing cricket, he used to be teased upon and picked upon often. But these didn’t bother Subbu. He needed his brothers and friends. He was always dependent on them. He was scared to be left alone and needed to belong to a group. His mother felt sorry for him and was quite worried about his life when he grew up.

As luck would it, Subbu got a nag for a wife. Whatever he didn’t wasn’t enough. How much ever he earned was enough. Subbu felt sorry for his life, but he feared his wife. Last month after 20 years of married life, she had left for her dad’s place along with their children. The reason was he didn’t have enough money for their living. She had given him an ultimatum if he wanted them back. He had to go to his brothers and get his share of the family property. Subbu knew his brothers had already said he wasn’t getting a penny. They were strong and politically connected. Subbu knew he wouldn’t get a penny from them. But to pacify his wife, he had left on this trip to ask his brothers for money. But he knew it was a ruse. He was going to the hill station to carry out a decision that he should have made long ago. Quit Living!

 Sundar

He loved her too much to let her go. She was the apple of his eye and the meaning of his life. He had found her after years. The one for him, his soulmate, his everything. She was his colleague at work. As a new joiner, she was assigned to him to be her buddy.

“I am a fresher and quite worried about corporate life,” she had said in their first meeting.

“Not to fear, we have all come through that phase. From college to corporate is a substantial change, but it's not like an impossible task. It is challenging and that's what makes it fun.” Sundar had replied.

 “I am hoping to learn a lot from you.”

 “Sure sure, I shall teach you all I know.”

And he had done that. Over the next 2 years, she learned the process quite fast and became indispensable to the team. She owed a lot to him and never once missed to say it in formal and informal forums. She said it was Sundar who showed her the light that lit up her path. But little did she know that she had been the light of his life without her knowing it. He had always been a loner and an introvert. But only with her, he was different. It was like he became a different person with her. She opened a side of him which he didn’t know before. He fell for her head over heels.

He had proposed to her last month. But the twist was he had done it when she had given him her marriage invitation. She had been shocked and she never had seen him as anything more than a friend and guide. But he had wanted more. She argued with him and apologised if she had given him any wrong hints. But she had never done anything like that, and he knew it. She wasn’t at fault. He had never expressed how he felt, and now he couldn’t blame her. But he knew he was lost without her. His path became dark without her.

She had quit her job due to the upcoming marriage and left for her hometown. With her no more in his life, he knew it had to end only one way.

Ankitha

She had not met one good man in her life. That was the bottom line of her experiences. Her stepfather had been the first worse one and when she ran away from home at the age of twelve, little did she know that the worse was ahead of her. She had been subjected to all sorts of abuse in the various homes for girls she traversed. She studied for a degree with a lot of difficulty and flew abroad through an agent for work. Just when she thought life was finally looking up, the agent took her passport and certificate away and made her a dancer in a dance bar. Long nights, crazy hours, and pathetic living conditions had been her everyday routine for the last 4 years. Finally, she was able to get some help from local Indians and was able to get her documents from the agent and come back to India. She had been in India a month before boarding this bus. She couldn’t live in India, but she wanted to breathe the last in her homeland.

She didn’t mind the accident. She would have preferred to have died in the accident. She was no stranger to hardship but dying was a whole different thing. She would have preferred the accident having done the job for her rather than what she had planned for herself once she reached the destination. But God couldn’t even let her die peacefully. She was now stuck in this bus.

Hari

The man in control of everything is how Hari’s friends refer to him. He liked it. Always in control, total control was Hari’s motto. He lived life like clockwork and to a calendar. His closest folks would know where he was any time of the day just based on what day of the week it was.

But one secret no one knew was his gambling addiction. He had made a lot of his money and assets through gambling. He was good at it and whether luck or skill, he didn’t mind so long as he made money. It all started a year ago when things started going downhill. He started losing money, little at first and then it ballooned to bigger and bigger amounts. He bet more thinking he would gain it back, but he kept losing. Now he was almost penniless but except his auditor and lawyer, no one knew the truth. He had lost the money of his investors, his friends, his relatives, and anyone who invested with him. He didn’t want to be known as the Hari who lost control. He had always had full control of his life and he would go out on his terms well in control of his death as well.

A loud creaking sound came from the bus, and they felt it sliding down and then tilting on the front side. “We are going to fall over the side of the mountain,” shouted Sundar.

There were screams from inside the bus. Hands were folded in prayer and lips were chanting desperate pleas for a miracle. The human instinct for survival trumps everything. Even those who plan to commit suicide fear death when it suddenly comes. Were these four brought together by destiny or design? How were four people who had been to a destination to commit suicide caught together in a bus accident?

As the creaking became louder and the bus titled more, the prayers inside the bus became louder too. “Save me, save us” shouted the four in unison forgetting why they took the trip in the first place.

After what seemed like an eternity, the creaking and tilting suddenly stopped and bright lights came on. They could hear a lot of people talking and moving about. As they were trying to make sense of what was happening, they heard a booming voice over a speaker. “All set activity to stop. Curtains down. We are going to extract them out.”

The next few minutes were a blur to those inside the bus. The bus was taken apart from all sides and the way it came off easily they realised it was a set properly like used in the movies and not a real bus. They were helped to their feet and given comfortable chairs to rest. Blankets were wrapped around them, and they were given a hot beverage. They looked around and saw how elaborate the setup was including the side of the mountain, mud, leaves, etc.

They looked around quite confused when an elderly gentleman moved in front of them.

“Hello, Subbu, Ankitha, Sundar, and Hari. I am Dr. Gandhi and I welcome you to PREVENT. We are a central government-aided organization working under the direct supervision of the Home Secretary. Our objective is to make India a zero-suicide country by 2040. It is God’s power to give and take life. The life that has been given to us is to live and live to the fullest. We don’t have the right to take it away. The movement against capital punishment, strict rules for abortions exist to ensure life isn’t taken away by anyone else other than God.”

“Each one of you was selected for study through various parameters. We do a broad monitoring of the online activity of individuals and when some red flags show up, we monitor those accounts closely. Without violating your privacy we have been monitoring your online searches, and posts and tracking your mental wellness based on your social profile. Hari, Subbu, and Sundar, your general tendency to like sad or melancholic posts, your lamenting posts, searches on ways to commit suicide, etc were clear red flags that made us bring you under our radar.”

He continued “Ankitha, you were a different case altogether. Your struggles abroad are known to the MEA and your subsequent time from your return to India has been closely monitored. We felt you might want to end your life. And we were right.”

“You all were unconsciously hypnotised to believe you were taking a trip. The pain in your head was induced by harmless drugs to simulate the feeling of being in an accident. Thankfully, none of you paid much heed to the fact that you didn’t have injuries even after such a fall from a gorge.”

Dr Gandhi folded his hands as if in prayer. “I apologise for the elaborate ruse. But it was needed. We want people to live. We want people to love life. Problems will be there. The time you spent in the bus when it was creaking and tilting, showed you and us, how much you want to live, and how much you don’t want to die. There are very less ways to die, but there are multiple ways to live.”

“Our team of doctors, financial analysts, and mental health professionals would help you get your mental and financial life back on track. My request to you is never to try to end your life ever again. I trust and believe you have a lot more to give to the world. You would get your phones back too.”  

As Dr. Gandhi finished speaking, the four of them stood together hands folded together thanking him and his team with tears in their eyes. Their eyes were fixated on the wall behind Mr. Gandhi’s head where the letters shone in bright neon “PREVENT – A Blessing in Disguise.”