Reporter’s Diary: Oh, ‘Deer’, look who was caught in the headlamps

Last week on Gandhi Road, Velachery, during a stopover at the neighbourhood pharmacy, close to midnight, this reporter met a customer, who walked into the drugstore holding up his scraped, bloodied arms.  He went on to say that he was involved in a strange accident. It seems a deer, one among the many that are found in IIT Madras, had run into his motorbike. Upon the pharmacist’s enquiry, the young man revealed that he had just gotten out of his house, in NGO Colony to get some antacids. He had barely gone a kilometre before an adult deer body-slammed into his motorbike, sending him careening on the tarmac. 

Having steadied himself, he had driven over to the pharmacist, and bought not just antacids, but another Rs 100 worth of tincture iodine, bandages and a painkiller. The bemused pharmacist asked this reporter as to how does one seek compensation for such damages?

He said, “If it were another motorist, he would have been compelled to cough up some cash or been reported to the police. But what do you do when animals decide to stake their claim to the roads at night, probably the only time they get to walk the space, that is rightfully theirs as well?” Oh deer, this is your space too!