I was around 12 years old and during our school annual holidays, my family and I went to our Uncle’s house in Madanapalle – a remote village in Andhra Pradesh. Early one morning, my brother and I went to the vegetable market, which was about 4kms from the house. Suddenly a bus came speeding and crashed into a tea shop because of brake Failure and 12 people died on the spot in front of us. But luckily, we escaped unharmed.

As it is a small village, and my uncle was the General Manager of a Mill, everybody knows knew us, and the news reached our house with a story that two young boys had died. The whole family was in our prayer room, not knowing what to do. They didn’t know if the 2 boys were us or someone else.

My uncle along with all the workers from the mill came rushing to the marketplace on bicycles. In the meantime, we were approaching our house fast through a shortcut route, calling to my uncle loudly whom we could see going through the Main road, but he could not hear us. After we reached our house, everybody came and hugged  us with eyes full of tears and telling us that God saved us. But my brother and I were in deep sorrow, as we could not forget a small boy who got hit by the bus and was thrown 15 feet in the air and the voice of someone crying Ramayya…. Ramayya….

I am 56 years old now and during my life time, I have had near dying moments on more than 4 occasions. Of late I’ve realised that God has given me this life for some fruitful purpose and that is why  I escaped all those incidents. This made me realize that humanity and love to people  is more important than anything and that motivated me and my big family to start doing Blood donation camps, Flood Relief camps, Corona relief camps arranging Oxygen support for needy people and participate in many other social activities.