I had spent majority of the thirty two years of my life under the simmering golden sun of India. My only connection with ice had been the ice cubes from my refrigerator, which I would see dissolve rapidly in my glass of fresh lemonade before I eagerly sipped on that refreshingly cold drink as soon as I came home from school. I would then close my eyes and press the empty cold glass against them.
Actually, I did see some snow once or twice as a child, during the monsoon when we had hailstorms. I remember rushing into the backyard of my house in Pune, an open umbrella in my hand and keeping it upside down to collect the hailstones the size of a small grape, as we ate them before they would melt.
My daughter has a much deeper connection with the snow. She was four months old when we moved to Buffalo, upstate New York, a town on the border of USA and Canada famous for its “lake effect” snow. The first three winters of her life were all about the snow. She played in it when she was one, she slid on it in toboggans when she was two and made a snow man when she was three.
People of Buffalo measure their snow in feet, not in inches. Witnessing two feet of snow falling in a single night, was a new experience. For someone like me who grew up between 30 and 42 degrees Celsius, minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit was clearly off the charts. At that temperature, the definition of cold takes a whole new meaning!
It was 7 a.m. on 26th January 2005. It had snowed two feet last night. As I opened the door, it felt like an invisible ghost was waiting outside to slash my cheeks and chin with a thousand sharp knives. The glow reflecting off the white snow, made the surroundings incredibly bright. Within thirty seconds my nose and lips went numb. I had turned on the heater of our red Honda CRV with a remote control ten minutes earlier. Seasoned Buffalo citizens had warned me of nose bleeds. Blood starts to freeze within minutes at these temperatures. Most frost-bites happen when people don’t respect these temperatures and I certainly wasn’t taking any chances. As I settled in the car, I reached for the snow shovel. I waited patiently for the thick sheet of snow to get wet enough so it would slide off easily. I came out of the car three times, each time no more than a minute and wiped off the snow just enough to see clearly through my windshield and the rear mirror.
Our house was in Orchard Park, an area right in the Lake Ontario lake effect snow. That means the lake literally dumped snow within four square miles of where we lived. The whole town drove four wheel drive SUV cars. During winters, some would still put on iron chains on the tyres. That reduced the chances of cars sliding especially on black ice. That’s a good thing by the way, because it’s usually the difference between driving normally versus suddenly finding yourself running into the oncoming traffic as your car spins out of control. I wasn’t going to take any chances this morning. Or so I thought as I got into the car...
I didn’t watch the morning news. I should have turned the car radio on. It was a mistake.
Had I turned on the radio, I would have learnt that last night was one of the worst snow blizzards in years and a big news by Buffalo standards. The snow was so thick, that the oaks couldn’t bear the weight and four hundred of them, had branches falling on houses, electric poles and roads making driving extremely dangerous. The temperatures had plummeted so much, that water pipes had burst and sump pumps in basements had stopped working. Half the town was without electricity and heating. Many cell phone towers were not functioning. Several exits on the I90 motorway were closed.
The roads looked awfully quiet as I turned left, speeding up slowly and cautiously towards the motorway. This was my last chance to turn back. I should have turned back. I should have listened to the radio. This wasn’t another normal snowy winter morning. I was now cruising at 50 miles in the fast lane, well below the maximum speed limit of 65 and at a safe 50 feet distance behind a massive truck. She was going steady and was about to get off at exit 6. When she does, I would slowly manoeuvre to the middle lane, then onto the slow lane and comfortably get off at exit 7 to go to HSBC tower, the only skyscraper in Buffalo which was my office. I was already planning my day. I would be in the car park in five minutes and into my cabin on the twenty fifth floor in about eight minutes. It was my daily routine.
There was only one problem. What I didn’t know, was that both exits 6 and 7 were closed that morning due to big trees lying on the ramps. The truck driver couldn’t see the ‘exit closed’ sign as the sign itself was snowed under. When he did, he had to brake urgently. As the five tonnes of his vehicle was coming to a screeching halt, a thirty feet long and a foot thick sheet of ice came sliding out from top of that truck and landed on my car. All I saw was the silvery grey ice dropping on my car completely blinding my view. I desperately started my front wipers, but they didn’t have the strength to move a foot of ice. I had no idea when I would crash into the truck as I took my foot off the pedal and contemplated various options in a split second, including whether or not I should pull up the hand brake, knowing fully that in these extreme icy conditions that would mean I would spin out of control.
The next ten seconds were the longest of my life. I saw the faces of my parents, my wife, my daughter and my god (Ganapati) as I heard the screeching noise of the truck tyres in front of me, the loud thud of the sheet of ice landing on my car, my racing heart-beat and the noise of my side mirror as it clanged against the metal barrier on the side of the road shoulder, all in rapid succession.
I had managed to stop the car on the shoulder, having switched all three lanes without pulling up my hand brakes. The truck was nowhere to be seen, but it may well have been around since the visibility was now less than twenty feet. I slowly got out of the car and walked up in front of the car to see where I was. I had stopped about thirty feet from the point where the road shoulder had no barrier and there was a ditch on the side of the road, deep enough for my car to topple three times over. I shuddered and it wasn’t due to the cold weather.
I thanked god and my parents. I knew I would tell this story many times over and for that I was very grateful.
4th February 2005.
