So here is the picture. I have to head over to a friend's place. I don't have transportation in the form of a friend's scooter, who usually accompanies me. My father's out of town, so I can sneak away with the bike, and I think I can handle it. Keep in mind that I still cannot leave the clutch in just the right way to ease the engine into first gear. I still do a mini wheelie, and that's about as good as someone who knows to balance really well going out with a bike.
So I start, and amazingly enough, I do it without a weelie. I have to go out of my building and take a left. but I take a right instead, just to flow along with the traffic. I might have to take a long detour for this, but I do not care. I am on the main road now, and handle it pretty well. Change the gears perfectly, give the signal, and turn left so that I can go where I want properly. Refer map. The yellow line is my path,. I had to go to Hiranandani.
Damn I donno to write, giving things away in weird gusts of information, instead of a coherently packaged log. Anyway, maybe this style has its own (totally unintentional) artistic merits, so i will just barge right ahead.
You can see that i head into trouble as soon as I take a left again. There is this Jam behind a bus, and I don't know how to stop. I do slow down, ease the engine, and stop. But then I totally stop. cannot move. The bike is still in gear, the engine is switched off, I am at the main entrance of a housing colony, a car is headed my way. I change gear wuickly, and go to the side of the road. I start up again, leaving the clutch and starting the engine, putting it into gear, and for thesecond time in a day, managing to start a bike without a wheelie. Maybe, subconsciously, I had fooled myself that I could do it. There is this girl on a scooter, and I am in first gear, and I cannot stop in time. Nothing happened, it was just a bump that I didn't pay much attention to. I think it's time I go home. i circle back to my house, pass it thinking that I will go to the highway, and handle it. Big mistake. I navigate the stretch to the highway on the main road pretty well. I horn a lot, give loads of signals, and change gears somewhat expertly, and I find myself at the highway.
There I freak out. Because there are a bunch of lorries and trucks, two wheelers are darting amongst them like birds beneath the feet of elephants, and I know I cannot handle that. Moreover, I haven't figured out an elegant way to stop yet, so I close the enigine, the bike is still in gear, and I am on the fucking highway, next to a petrol pump.
I remove my helmet, wipe the sweat off my hands and forehead, and pretend to wait there for some time. My head is reeling with thoughts like "what the hell have I done" and "how the hell will i get back." Going back down the main road is out of the question, because I would either have to go the wrong way on a highway, or o down it for some time before I could get a U-turn. I figure my chances are better if I tackle the highway. I start up the bike, get it moving without a wheelie again, this is becomeing a habit now, and somehow, I donno how, I wriggle through the traffic. I pass cine MAx, and there is this family is a swift, going really slow. I donno how slow, but I was doing a cautious thirty fiver. This family is not letting me overtake, which i do from the OTHER side, going BEHIND a bunch of people waiting to cross the road.
Woah! I donno what I jsut did there. I KNEW it was a close call. I plough on, two turnings go by, and the last one comes. There is a signal. I approach the signal in first gear, going really slowly so that by the time I reach it, it would change. Bad luck. It doesn't. Bike is in gear. In the middle of the road. The engine is switched off. I have to come back to neutral before putting it back into gear and starting off. I put it in neutral, take it to the side of the road, and start. Then decide that I'd rather go home. Instead of going straight, I take a left, and then make my way home.
As I approach Vasant Vihar, and go around the corner where I once remember exploring past as a kid on a bicycle, and back then, I wasn't allowed to leave the bulding on my cycle.This was really long ago, but I remember the moment I exited Vasant Bihar. It was the longest I had EVEr gone unaided. Those were the days.
But now I was on home turf. Here, I had been embaressed so often that people didn't even wait for me to do something new, they'd just laughed. The place had been saturated with my embaressment, so I had nothin o lose her. And then things started changing.
Now I realise what is meant by intuitive driving. The trickiest parts were yet to come, but I was no longer tense. Looking back, I have no clue how I reacted the way I did. It just sort of came to me - there is no other explanation for it. Seems unbelievable if you've never felt it before, but its tis wonderful feeling of unlimited potentially.
Basically, cars were backing up, crossing the road, tricky stuff with rickshaws in the plural, and this guy who went slow in the middle of the road, leaving me unsure as to where to overtake him from, and onoming traffic that was hogging more of the road than they were supposed to. Dangerously rode around a car backing up, right into another car heading towards me, but avoided it like I always expected it there. Amazing drive home.
five minutes later, I put the keys back in my pockets ans swore I wouldn't do it again.
Once I get my nerves back, I AM going to go to Hiranandani.
(Today, however, I used the rickshaw, had paani puri, and narrated all of the above for some pseudosympathetic laughter.)
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