A Story Of Two Travels: New Haven And Mazidbhita

This is a story that spans two continents, and in subtle ways shows you the human connect between two impossibly different places.

- Shalim M Hussain

The Fall

On the 7th of January I slipped on black ice and dislocated my elbow. It was a cold January morning and I was walking out of my friend Tanmoy’s apartment in New Haven. Our schedule for the day was to catch the earliest Metro North train to New York where I was presenting an academic paper the next day. The plan was to meet our friend Amit at the Omni Berkshire hotel, leave our bags and take a long walk around the city. All our plans vanished in thin air with the fall. This is how it happened.

I had a heavy backpack on, a laptop bag on my chest and a bright red trolley bag in my right hand. At -10 degrees Celsius it was a comparatively warm morning but the cold breeze was like an icy slap on the face, especially when one stepped out of a heated room. It seeped through layers of clothing and formed a film of dread one’s my skin. I had to walk through a raised mound of snow on the pavement and take five steps across the road to the taxi. Suddenly the road turned a sharp 30 degrees and before I could realize it, the trolley slipped out of my hands, my left hand flailed and I was on the pavement. The weight of my backpack, laptop and my body fell on my right hand. Then came the pain- a sharp burning pain that started at my wrist (because the first part of my body to hit the ground was my open palm), travelled up my hand and exploded on my elbow. I was scared that my radius and ulna had collided with enough force to rupture the cartilage and lay on my back gasping. Tanmoy had already crossed the road but he now came running and pulled me up. The cab driver made me clench and unclench my knuckles and fold my hand at the elbow. Flexing was fine but I couldn’t get my fingers all the way to my right shoulder.