Howrah, June 4: Ruby Biwi will never forget the feeling. “Suddenly we were floating in the air.”

Lying in a bed at the Eastern Railway Orthopaedic Hospital, the 30-year-old had no difficulty recalling the exact moment when her bus broke through the flyover’s concrete railing and began the 35-foot drop to the railway tracks.

“I had a headache, so I was resting my head on the seat in front of me and dozing,” said Ruby, who has suffered injuries to her head, arms and chest. “Then there was this huge crash and I rocked backwards, not knowing what was happening.”

Everything happened so fast — “in the blur of a moment” — that she didn’t have the time to realise the bus had indeed leapt off the flyover. “One moment I was dozing, the next I was floating, and the next we were hurtling down like a rocket. There was a huge sound as we landed. After that I don’t remember anything.”

Other passengers too spoke of the same eerie feeling of “floating” and “not knowing why”.

Akbar Midde, a 38-year-old Howrah resident, said that after two successive jerks he “suddenly realised that we were suspended in the air”.

“The bus had been racing for a long time. Suddenly there was a massive jerk and we all slumped forward. We thought the bus had hit the one ahead of it, but within a few seconds we realised our bus had hit something else. Then we were suspended in the air,” said Midde, who is recovering at the same hospital as Ruby.

“Then, as the bus started dropping, I remember it hit some wires which broke the fall somewhat. After that, it hit the ground with a thundering crash.”

Midde had passed out and only remembers regaining consciousness in hospital.

“After I came to, for a while I did not know where I was or what had hit me,” he said.

“Then slowly those moments of horror began to return and I realised I was in a hospital somewhere.”

It was a doctor who told him that the nightmare was over.