Caught in an Encounter!???

It was a rainy evening in Bandra. Around 8:45 PM, I caught an auto from my office to reach Bandra Station. I was just 4oom away from Bandra Station and the autowallah in broken marathi told that he cannot proceed further and asked me to alight immediately. I paid him the fare and got down. I walked down the road...Something was unusual....the road which would be swarmed by Autos and Taxis wore a deserted look. The road branched into two and I took the one that would lead me to the railway station. Suddenly, there was smoke around me....Some 20 men clad in uniform alighted from a truck and cordoned off the area.

There were screams everywhere....and another batallion of police personnels surrounded the area. There were some 10 people clad in their religious outfits surrounded by two rings of policemen. I was standing between the inner and the outer ring. Suddenly a shower of water drenched me completely. It was not like rain...the force was tremondous...I could see men in black suits with yellow caps climbing up the neighbouring skywalk....I have seen numerous cop movies and liked those encounter scenes very much!! But i never thought i would be involved in one!!...Those scenes flashed across my mind. The very fact that this was an area dominated by a minority community compounded my doubts..The noise of police siren filled the air.

There were announcements by policemen requesting people to leave the area immediately. I thought that this could be my last day on earth.I could hear a loud explosion too.

Then I turned my left and saw a flight of stairs. I did not even look where it was leading too. I climbed the stairs with full viguor hoping that it would lead me to safety. True...the stairs led me to the skywalk. Then I looked down and understood what had happened. A fire had broken out and the explosion was a result of the inferno. The shower of water was nothing but the water pumped to bring the inferno under control!!

True, it was a case of a mistaken incident!! I would never forget those few minutes inside the police cordon...I thought that would be the last day in my life..But at the same time ..it was very exciting too!! Being a police movie buff, all the encounter scenes flashed across my mind. The very thought of police opening fire chilled my spines but those stairs led me to safety. After realising what had actually happened, I just laughed at my imagination that ran wild!!