The Year

I clearly remember that day, as if it was just yesterday.

So, I was walking alone in a not-so-crowded road. This happened a few years ago, and I was barely a fourteen-year-old then.

When I reached a certain point on the road, my brain went a little dizzy, as it happens when you get a severe déjà vu.

For those who do not know what Déjà vu is, here’s the Wikipedia definition of it:

Déjà vu is the phenomenon of having the strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has already been experienced in the past.

Déjà vu is a feeling of familiarity, and déjà vécu (the feeling of having "already lived through" something is a feeling of recollection.

I glance all around, and I find a typical dusty environment, with no one on it - shops all closed, roads all empty and me here - having a strong feeling that I have been in this place - but do not know when, or why.

I get a sudden thrill of excitement, and I feel like crossing the road.

Nothing unusual, right? I mean - I just specified “roads all empty”.

It was then that I saw it.

A man wearing a helmet - without the chin strap - riding full speed at me, as though I was not visible - on a CD 100 Hero Honda. He was wearing a brown jacket, and blue jeans.

In a dream-like trance, I stood there, for like eternity, waiting him to run me over. It was only when he was mere yards away from me, did I suddenly moved out of his way, and he rode by me, looked at me and yelled "I would have KILLED YOU!"

The feeling of deja-vu, that had consumed me for a few seconds [had lost sense of time] just vanished. There I was, in the midst of people, walking on that street, with my mouth gaping open, literally saved from an accident.