A woman from the city who was travelling back from Puri on Saturday morning by car saw hearses and ambulances lined up on the road near Balasore.
Ananya Chatterjee and her husband, who were travelling with their parrot, had rented a car from Puri after their train the previous night got cancelled following the horrific accident in Balasore.
“The sight of so many hearse vans and ambulances sent a shiver down my spine. I just looked, without speaking a word,” Chatterjee told The Telegraph on Sunday morning. The driver told them that the accident spot was close by.
While they were crossing Balasore, the other flank of the road was closed to traffic for about one-and-a-half kilometre.
“Vehicles in both directions were travelling through the Calcutta-bound flank of the road. The other lane was lined up with hearse vans and ambulances. And there were innumerable policemen on the road,” said Chatterjee, school administrator of an NGO in Kolkata.
Ananya Chatterjee
Taking a break from work, she and her husband, along with their parrot, had reached Puri on May 29. This was her 10th visit to the temple town on the Bay of Bengal coast but never before was the trip so unpleasant.
“I have had only pleasant memories about Puri. But this time I returned with a strange feeling, of sadness. The people who died had no idea that their lives would end so suddenly and like that,” she said.
Chatterjee had first heard about the accident from TV news on Friday night. “We could not eat dinner, we felt so sad,” she said.
It was at 6am on Saturday that she started looking for options to return to Calcutta.
“We knew that returning by train was not a possibility. So I was looking for bus options. But there were no seats available. We would have had to wait till Sunday night if we had to return by bus," she said.
Flight was not an option either as they were travelling with their bird.
The caretaker of the AirBNB accommodation where they were staying arranged for a car.
“While returning we saw too many cars on the road and the drivers knew each other. Our driver, who owned the vehicle, told us that all are travelling to Calcutta,” said Chatterjee.
The couple had left Puri at 10am and reached their Kasba residence after 12 hours. Exhausted and traumatised.