I knew I was going to have a good one, but not quite this. I missed a few though.
It's the pipeline to Gandhinagar at Vartak Nagar. There is a field there. I catch a share rickshaw with Dipti Panchal, who is my rakhi sister. There are six people packed in the car, three in the back, three in the front, I have to sit on the windshield, with Dipti. The maniac driver starts, the Neelkanth road is shut, so he drives around Upvan.
I am struggling to stay on the windshield. Dipti falls off, never to be seen again. There is a handle on top of the car, that I manage to grab, but in the process I bend the antenna around. The driver sticks his head out and looks at it, but seems like he does not mind too much, and that his antenna keeps getting bent. My bag is covering his field of view, and I wonder how he is even driving. I keep slipping and the antenna keeps getting increasingly bent.
Just as we turn Upvan, I switch to some kind of drone view. There is a second car up front, tethered to the one we are driving, and the driver is in control of that as well. He asks me to take the wheel while he fixes the antenna. As I turn the wheel, the tethered car ahead turns, instead of my own, but my car follows behind the tethered car ahead by turning at the same point.
Seems to be some advanced semi autonomous vehicle technology. With drones.
Anyway, I fall off the car and my clothes get ripped in several places. I fall off, and cross a stretch of road between Cottage and my Home, where we find a pair of baby's shoes. Some old woman takes the shoes. I land up near school, where Dipti's relatives are looking for her. There, Dipti's older sister, Anala Panchal is struggling to find a share rickshaw from Vasant Vihar to EDWU. All the share rickshaws are filling up, and there are buses driving recklessly.
I land up near Pongam, where I bump into an old friend, Suhail Basher. We have a catching up talk, where I learned that Basher is just visiting for a short while, and that he has moved to "GK" in Nagpur with his family, and that he is married. He asks me to visit. I struggle to remember GK stands for Greater Kailash and its in Delhi, in the dream.
By this time, Anala has managed to get a small car, and asks me to get in, to look for Dipti. This is a four seater, and there are two of her friends in the back. I squeeze in, but the doors do not close. Those in the back are stoically silent. I'm barely hanging to my seat as the vehicle zooms back towards Upvan. I remember thinking this is like the Amazing race.
We do not find Dipti, so we head back to Eden Woods, to "look for her online". As we are turning from Vasant Vihar to Edwu, Anala gets distracted by some passing vehicle and turns to look at it. I can figure that Anala is just learning to drive, or one of those people who drives but never really learns to drive. A massive bus hits us, and we are sent flying all the way back to Upvan! There is a naka bandi there, and someone from the back says, "stay calm and cooperate". We weave through a bunch of school children, the police do not ask us questions, and instead of ending up back in EDWU, we go to Gulmohar.
There is a new complex here, something very tall. There are a bunch of people playing cricket and videogames on phone below the complex. As soon as I get off the car, a bunch of things happen.
We start walking towards Anala's apartment. Some elderly fellow from the colony remembers me, and asks me where I have been. I struggle with a response, not remembering exactly. He says "welcome back", looks at my clothes and comments "always knew you were a crazy fellow". Another guy, asks "I always knew you were the computer guy. Do you have a spare laptop?" I say no, even though I do. The cable person is welding something into the ground, like a more advanced version of splicing optical cables. He says I will have to use a WiFi hotspot as the network is down. I think 'oh great' and we walk on.
I bump into another old friend, Sudhir Sharma, who just nods and smiles at me. Someone sitting in a ledge above him talks about "cracking open relics" but they are not playing warframe, some other game like Dragon Clan Wars or something.
I ask Sudhir what game they are talking about, and Sharma responds with a "don't worry."
By now the agenda has somehow shifted from finding Dipti to finishing Warframe as fast as possible. The gameplan is to get a bunch of blokes together to play for a week. I say it cannot be done. I get into the lift with Anala and two young guys I do not know the names of. They are laughing at my torn clothes, which are three layers of clothings, all ripped at different points so nothing shows.
I try to explain to them that I am against the whole point of playing Warframe just to finish, and that they will enjoy it more if they do not put so much pressure on themselves. They cannot understand it, I get indignant and worked up.
The elevator door opens, and so do my eyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment