The mountains of Jammu & Kashmir possess a strange beauty. They can calm your soul one moment and threaten your life the next. I was a young Army officer then, posted to my first unit in the Valley. One afternoon, I was assigned a routine courier duty — carrying important military documents from the headquarters situated nearly two hours away. We set off in a battered one-ton Army vehicle with another officer, four armed guards and our driver Om Prakash (name changed).
The Journey Begins
Green valleys stretched endlessly below us, birds circled lazily over cliffs and clouds floated like white sails across the sky. Soon after, the vehicle began coughing and jerking violently. "Problem in the carburettor, Saab," Om Prakash muttered nervously. He tinkered under the bonnet, restarted the engine, and somehow got us moving again. But the old vehicle stalled repeatedly. Each time, the guards jumped down to push the vehicle while Om Prakash restarted it using the downhill slope. After the fourth breakdown, exhaustion overtook everyone. The men sat silently at the rear, rifles resting between their knees. With the vehicle in neutral gear and the engine off, it continued rolling slowly downhill.
A Moment of Unease
I leaned against the window, watching tiny birds sip water from a rocky hillside. Ahead, the road curved sharply to the left around a deep gorge. One wrong move and we would plunge hundreds of feet into the valley below. Something felt odd. The silence. The absence of engine noise. A strange uneasiness crept over me. Then I casually turned towards the driver's seat. It was empty. For a split second, my mind froze. The vehicle was moving on its own.
The Terrifying Discovery
I spun around and looked. To my horror, Om Prakash was running behind the vehicle, trying to catch it. In that instant, death sat beside me. We were hurtling towards the gorge. Another few seconds and our vehicle — along with two officers, four soldiers and classified documents — would disappear into the valley forever. Training took over where thought ended. I lunged across the seats, grabbed the steering wheel with one hand and dived onto the seat to press the brake pedal with the other while turning the wheel sharply towards the mountainside. My body twisted awkwardly as the vehicle skidded forward in terrifying silence.
The Aftermath
Then it stopped. Just four metres short of the edge. For several moments, nobody spoke. When Om Prakash reached us, panting and confused, the mystery unravelled. Unable to push the vehicle from the side, he had gone behind it to shove it downhill. But once the slope steepened, the vehicle gathered speed faster than he could run. And he simply failed to catch it. The guards assumed I knew everything. I assumed the driver was driving. In reality, nobody was controlling the vehicle.
Whenever I think back to that silent vehicle rolling towards the abyss, I still feel the cold touch of death sitting beside me. The author is a Patiala-based contributor.
