Just Another Day

Routine. It is a simple word, yet it shapes so much of our lives.

Day after day, we wake up, follow the same roads, meet the same people, and return home without giving much thought to the journey in between. After a while this repetition creates a sense of comfort, control and a sense of order. There is a sense of belief that tomorrow will look much like today. And when every day unfolds much in the same way, we don’t expect anything out of the ordinary. We stop questioning the things that have always gone right. Familiarity eventually turns into certainty.

In these moments and in this routine, the roads we travel slowly become part of who we are. We travel on them so much that they stop feeling like stretches of tarmac all together. They remain little more than the familiar sequence of turns and landmarks woven into the fabric of everyday life. We learn its rhythms without ever meaning to. The patch of uneven road that makes us ease off the throttle, the traffic signal that always seems to take longer than it should, the fruit vendor setting up his cart at the same spot every morning, everything becomes an expectation.

The day the tea stall is not in its place something feels terribly off. The road and the journey become things we trust so completely, that we stop thinking about it altogether. They fade into the background of our lives, becoming as familiar and dependable as the sunrise itself. On the rare day a tea seller isn’t at his usual spot, something feels out of place. We may not know his name nor we may ever have stopped there for a cup of tea. Yet his absence catches our attention immediately. It breaks the rhythm we have grown so accustomed to, and reminds us just how much of our world is built upon small, predictable details. We rarely notice its presence, but its absence is immediately felt.

Perhaps this is the greatest illusion that routine creates. The more familiar something becomes, the less room we leave for uncertainty. We begin to assume that the roads we travelled safely yesterday will be just as forgiving tomorrow. That the journey we have completed hundreds of times before will unfold exactly as they always have. Without realizing it, we stop treating ordinary days as possibilities and start treating them as guarantees.

For me, the road between home and work had become one of those certainties. I had travelled on it so many times that I no longer saw it as a place where the unexpected could happen. It was simply a familiar part of the day. I had ridden through it in the rain, under the harsh summer sun, during rushed mornings and exhausted evenings. It was familiar enough to feel harmless.

Then, one ordinary afternoon, that certainty vanished. In a matter of seconds, a road I had trusted for years reminded me of that routine is not a guarantee and familiarity is not protection. The fact that something has gone right a thousand times does not mean it cannot go wrong the thousand-and-first.

It had rained heavily just a few hours earlier. By the time I was on the road, the downpour had passed. The sky was beginning to clear and the traffic had returned to its usual rhythm. The road was the same single-lane stretch I travelled every day between work and home. Under normal conditions, I would ride through it comfortably at around 60 or 65 kmph, barely giving it a second thought. That day, however, the surface was still damp and patches of mud had been dragged onto the tarmac by passing vehicles. Instinctively, I eased off the throttle and settled into a slower pace of around 40 kmph. That and a whole lot of luck is probably the only reason I am alive to write this.

The rain and the wet road had already made me conscious. I wasn’t trying to overtake anyone. I made sure that every input was deliberate. I knew that the conditions were less forgiving than usual and I was riding accordingly. Despite all this, despite me taking every possible precaution I could have, I could not stop the inevitable. One moment I was riding through a familiar stretch of road, completely in control. The next, the motorcycle wasn’t underneath me anymore. The rear wheel slipped away beneath me and the motorcycle began sliding across the road. I remember fighting the slide, trying to correct the slide, trying to hold the bike upright and regain control. But it was already gone.

The motorcycle skidded across the wet road while I was thrown in the opposite direction.

In retrospect, I think its eerily strange, how much our brain can process and catastrophize in just a few seconds. I lost control, and my entire focus narrowed down to a single objective, landing safely. In the heat of the moment there was just the desperate hope that I could somehow control the outcome. That day however, my fate was already decided. No amount of struggle or caution could have prevented that fall. Then. I hit the ground. Hard.

As my helmet struck the rough, muddy asphalt, I suddenly realized that, for the first time in my life, I genuinely might die. The fall itself lasted only a few seconds, but in that moment time seemed to slow down. I was suddenly aware of just how exposed I was. This was a busy road. Traffic flowed steadily in both directions, carrying people through another ordinary evening. Some were rushing home after work. Some were thinking about dinner. Some were probably looking forward to seeing their families, playing with their children, or simply putting an end to a long day.

A few moments earlier, I had been thinking about exactly the same things. A few moments earlier, I was one of them. But in a span of just a few seconds, everything I had taken for granted was stripped away. I was suddenly lying on the road, wondering about life and death. The ordinary rhythm of my day had came to an abrupt halt.

As I lay there, I realized how little control I had over what happened next. The outcome no longer depended on my skill, my decisions, or my caution. The road was still alive with traffic, and all it would have taken was one person reacting a moment too late. One distracted glance, one delayed reaction or one driver noticing me a second too late. A brake pulled too late. A steering wheel veered not enough. A heavy overloaded truck that was meant to go around, but failed. My survival now depended on whether luck decided to stay on my side for a few moments longer.

But that moment never came. The traffic had slowed down and vehicles were passing around me. I picked myself up from the road and staggered towards the motorcycle. My arm and knee were bleeding, though I barely noticed it at the time. Adrenaline had dulled everything. A few feet away, my motorcycle lay on its side, bruised and battered, just like me. I lifted the bike upright and stood there for a moment, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Only then did I begin to take stock. My helmet was cracked and my shoulder felt strangely lifeless, hanging there without strength or response.

For now, I was simply grateful to still be standing.

What I remember almost as clearly as the fall itself are the people who came running towards me. Within moments, strangers had stopped what they were doing and gathered around. Some helped me get to my feet while others helped move the motorcycle. No one blamed me, no one judged, and neither a single one of them said an unkind word. Their only concern was whether I was hurt and whether I needed help. Several people offered to help me get home. Others stayed back for a few minutes longer, making sure I could stand, breathe, and gather myself before continuing on.

For a few minutes, complete strangers chose kindness over indifference, and I will probably remember that for far longer than I will remember the crash itself.

I walked away from that accident with bruises, a damaged motorcycle, and a cracked helmet. But the near death experience also left me with a different perspective. For years, I had treated that stretch of road as a certainty. It took only a few seconds to remind me how fragile that certainty really was.

We spend so much of our lives assuming that ordinary days will remain ordinary. We postpone conversations, delay plans, and take comfort in routines because we believe there will always be another opportunity tomorrow. And most of the time we are right. But those few other times, we are reminded that tomorrow is always a privilege, not a right.

Life is fragile. Far more fragile than we like to admit. It does not matter whether you ride a Continental GT 650, a Hayabusa, or your father’s decade-old Activa. The machine beneath you may be different, but the human body is remarkably vulnerable.

Had I not been wearing my helmet that day, this story may never have been written. So wear a helmet. Ride with humility. Stay alert, even on the roads you know best. Accidents do not always wait for mountain passes, highways, or distant adventures. Most of the time they find us on the roads we have travelled a thousand times before.