Cuddling her eight-month-old baby girl on a bed at the VSS Medical College Hospital, Burla, on Monday, Laxmipriya Patel, who had a miraculous escape from the clutches of death, is yet to come to terms with the tragedy that unfolded before her barely 24 hours ago.
The 26-year-old dancer in the opera group, Laxmipriya can barely express her gratitude to the almighty for the new lease of life bestowed on her and her daughter as the accident claimed lives of her husband and five-year-old son.
In a flash of a moment, her four-member family comprising of husband Rajaskhar Patel (30), son Dipak (5) and daughter Dipika (8 months) would be reduced to two.
“All I knew that my baby was in my lap while the bus plunged into a deep gorge. When I regained consciousness, my daughter was before me,” she says .
Laxmipriya and her husband had been associated with the opera group for the past couple of years.
She says: “We were not new to ghat roads, but the driver was. After he successfully drove the bus along two to three steep hilly bends, we started to relax. But he could not control the vehicle on one of the bends that caused the accident.”
Many among the 11 survivors had identical stories. Puja Chhatria, a member of the Bharati Gananatya, had a providential escape while her husband succumbed to injuries.
