Two close encounters with danger

It is not unusual for travellers to face moments of danger as their paths carry them to strange places. My experience is that when danger is upon you, all you can do is try to keep your wits about you and look for a way out. A wave of panic is possible or even inevitable at that moment, but we need to quickly get ourselves under control. Of course, this is easier said than done. Certain moments can rattle us badly. Sometimes we are lucky to have a narrow escape.

Such a thing happened to me in Los Angeles, USA. I was travelling around the US and had paid a visit to my nephew in Los Angeles, where he was an IT professional. His friends and he had rented an apartment and were living a typical happy-go-lucky, messy bachelor life. I joined the gang cheerfully. The chaos was very familiar to me, having gone through the same drill in my youth.   

Their apartment was located in a giant condominium of uniform buildings, hundreds of them stretching out as far as the eyes could see. When I went out for a morning walk, my nephew and co hadn’t got up. They had told me I could just close the door when I left, and there was no need to lock it. I walked around the locality for an hour or so. It was not a celebrity enclave like Beverly Hills, which was only a few miles away, but an average citizen’s dwelling place. In India we would call it a middle-class place. It was only 8 am but the sun was hot and strong. I had begun to sweat a lot. 

I decided to go back home and get myself a cup of black coffee. It was then that I realised that I hadn’t noted down the number of my nephew’s apartment. My hand reached for the mobile phone in my pocket, but I remembered it didn’t have a local SIM. But I felt confident that my visual memory was good enough to identify the apartment. I zeroed in on one which I thought looked familiar, and the number seemed right. I ran up the steps and pushed the door open, jovially shouting in Malayalam, ‘Hey guys! You aren’t up yet?’

Suddenly, a figure sprang up from a sofa, shouting, ‘What?’ He had a gun in his hand, pointed at me. I was so stunned that I thought I was dreaming. I couldn’t believe this was happening. My world had turned topsy-turvy. I stood there like one turned to stone and tried to say something, but no words came out. Finally, I said in a trembling voice, ‘I’m very sorry. I’ve made a mistake. I’ve entered the wrong house by mistake. I thought it was my nephew’s house. I’m very sorry.’ 

The man now came closer. His gun was still pointed at me. He was a six-foot-plus African American, looking as if made of iron, and calm. He took a good look at me. Before his towering presence, I felt I was a little dwarf. Then, in a casual, deep drawl, he told me, ‘Man, you gave me a scare.’ I just stood looking at him dumbly. Then he added, ‘I would’ve shot you just now.’ My heartbeat rang in my ears. He lowered the gun. I found my breath again and stammered out more apologies. ‘What’re you doing here?’ he asked. ‘I’m a traveller.’ I said. ‘Friend,’ he said, ‘you were in extreme danger just now. Watch where you’re going in future. Good day!’ 

I was so shattered that I sat down on a bench under a tree to get a grip on myself. It seemed a miracle that I was alive. I was ashamed of myself. I thought over what had happened. The first mistake was that I hadn’t bothered to put a US sim card in my mobile phone, which would have given me outdoor connectivity - in this case, I could’ve rung up my nephew for the apartment number. The next one was not noting down or memorising my nephew’s apartment number before setting out. It might’ve been my carelessness or forgetfulness. Either way, it was a major blunder. Yet another mistake was that I didn’t knock. Perhaps I could be forgiven for not doing so because my dealings with my nephew and friends were casual and informal. But a knock would’ve made all the difference between life and death.

Another brush with danger took place during my first Africa visit. I had reached the city of Beira in Mozambique after a tough 15-hour bus journey from Harare, Zimbabwe.  A bloody civil war had ended in Mozambique about a year ago, and the country was still dangerously volatile. It was perilous to step off the road even to pee because your feet or the pee could set off an undetected landmine, blowing you up into smithereens. 

Beira was almost a ghost-city, near-deserted, ravaged by war, and gloomy. Helmut aka H, a German businessman, was my contact in Beira, to whom an African-Indian acquaintance of mine had introduced me earlier by phone call. H was a gentleman if ever there was one, kind, generous and understanding. I had requested him to find me the cheapest accommodation possible. He had thus booked me a caravan in the caravan park run by his club on a daily rent of six dollars. This was the rock bottom, he said, with a smile.

It had been pouring ever since I left Harare. The evening was dark and forbidding. A violent, nonstop wind was blowing, almost sweeping us off our feet.  Streaks of lightning snaked through the black sky.  My clothes were soaked in rain, and water filled my shoes. The rain had eased off. An attendant of the club took H and me to one of six caravans parked on the beach under a clump of casuarina trees. The sea was muddy and rough. The caravans shook and swayed under the wind, their parts creaking. The trees were so bent over that it seemed they would topple any moment. From wires strung through the branches of the trees, a few electric bulbs shone dimly, swinging in the wind. The same wires went into the caravans. 

The caravan stood 3-4 feet above ground, and H and I climbed the cast-iron steps that led into it. The situation inside the caravan was bleak and dismal. The floor was wet. The windows were two grilled peepholes. The walls were damp and dirty with fungus. The bed was a fold-back, cushioned iron bunk attached to the wall. It had no pillow or sheet. H was shocked by the sight. The attendant told us definitively that this was all there was to it.  H told me apologetically that he would’ve taken me home, but his girlfriend was visiting. And I consoled myself by saying that after all I was paying only six dollars. And this was just one night in a man’s life. Did it matter?

H left. I went to close the door, and now came the first shock. The door wouldn’t close. It hung loose from its hinges, and the wind kept closing and opening it. I was shaken when I realised that I was going to sleep in an open caravan in a country where hardly any law existed. I climbed onto the bunk wearily, hoping for the best. The roar of the wind filled the air, and the caravan shook from side to side.

Sometime at night, I abruptly woke up, feeling water falling on my body. Water was leaking from several points on the roof. Rain falling on the metallic body of the caravan sounded like a shower of stones. The caravan itself was swaying and shaking as if it was going to topple over. Then I saw that water was sloshing on the floor. I jumped out of the bunk, grabbed my bags and things and placed them on the bunk. Then I stood there miserable and lost, not knowing what to do. All of a sudden, the door-panels which the wind had closed swung open, and the wind carried a sheet of rain into the caravan. 

I ran to the door and stretched out my hand to pull the door shut. I felt a burning, searing, indescribable pain penetrating my body. I screamed and jumped back. But the force behind the pain was pulling me to it. I screamed again, blindly fought the terrifying force and managed to extricate myself. I stood back, trembling, breathless and about to collapse, and tried to understand what had happened. I had been about to be electrocuted. Apparently there was a short circuit, and the door had become electrically charged. 

I was trapped inside a caravan under the fury of rain and wind with electric charge running through the door panel and frame. I didn’t know what else had become live with electricity. Anything I touched might electrocute me. The fact that I was standing on the wet floor and not yet dead meant the floor was safe. But there was no knowing when electric charge would leak to the floor as well.

I stood dazed, horrified, my head whirling. I looked at my watch. It was 2 am. No amount of shouting for help was going to be heard above the thundering of the wind and the rain. One thing was clear. I had to get out of the caravan at any cost before electricity found its way to the rest of the body of the caravan. It was then that I realised the simple deadly truth: to exit the caravan I needed to cross the charged door. And that was a death-trap. I needed to exit without touching any part of the door, and also avoiding the steps which could be charged too. The only way before me was clear: I must jump out, clearing the door and the steps in one go. It was, as I mentioned, a drop of 3-4 feet. It meant a certain kind of acrobatic competence which I knew I didn’t have. But there was no option. A few more shake-ups of the wires by the wind, and electricity could wreak havoc upon the caravan. Thus, I placed my passport and wallet into a plastic bag, put it away in my trouser pocket, took my place a couple of feet away from the door, took a deep breath, and jumped. Sailing through that charged door was a horrifying moment. Landing on my rump upon the slush and mud of that seafront in the pouring rain remains one of the most memorable moments of my life. I then ran through the rain to the restrooms some distance away, found a dry place on the veranda, sat down and leaned back on the wall. I couldn’t believe I’d done it.  Nothing else mattered now. I was alive. 

To me, these are inexplicable moments. We can certainly look for reasons why we were in danger. We can also tell stories about it later. At the end of the day, as far as I’m concerned, I’m happy and grateful that I’m here to tell the tale.