We start thinking of a backup plan when two young men appear, exchange a few words with the driver. One of them very casually sits in the driver's seat while his companion helps push the car.
A few minutes later, the car roars back into action and the two men walk away just as casually as they had appeared -- as if it was just a usual occurrence -- without even giving us a chance to say 'thank you.'
"He was a driver too," says Abbasbhai, our driver, and I think of visuals of stalled cars with harried drivers caught in the middle of whizzing traffic in Mumbai, where no one, barring perhaps the traffic police, stops to lend a hand.
This is Bihar, known as India's lawless state, where my editors had sent us with many warnings of 'Be careful, stay safe.' But that morning on that road at a place we didn't know, we couldn't have had a better way.
Image: The road leading to the Shanti stupa in Rajgir, Bihar. Close by are the remains of the prison where King Bimbisara, the ruler of Magadh, was imprisoned by his son Ajatshatru reportedly around 491 BC.
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