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THE MOTORCYCLIST IN ME
Lamp posts, mile stones, fencing, cow dung cakes, swarm of flies and flock of hen, men, women and children.
There were scores of them.
And the curves were in hundreds. For a fifty rights there were sixty lefts.
Ponds, lakes, rivers and bridges.
They all flew past me leaving trails.
An object for every milli-second, a scene for every second.
Vivid mages went past me on either side at break neck speed.
I know now, with a shudder , had I concentrated, I could have gone squint then.
The future, present and past were never so aligned for it seemed that they stood still when I zipped past them with bugs crashing against my visor.
Eddies of the bygone formed and collapsed behind me leaving a trail.
A spiraling trail of things I went past.
The lazy afternoon air seemed to be a brick wall which I kept crashing into endlessly.
Sure I felt like god. An aerodynamically tragic god to whom the diversity of colors, shapes, forms and formations of objects, animate and inanimate, were being offered at a brain choking speed. Life was calling and I was out there answering
PART -II
Leh and ladakh had almost become an obsession. Perhaps my greatest obsession for a place I had never seen. A lust to wander in places unknown, a want to crush trails less travelled, to be away from schedules and from the realm of familiarity, the mundane re-assurance of known things and from the ever present bead of sweat dangling from the tip of my nose like a persistent reminder of daily hustle . So obsessed was I, that I drooled over it in dreams and dreamt about it when I sailed. With a disc of calm deep blue sea around me, I longed for the roads which would take me to snow clad peaks, ice cold lakes and clear blue skies. And yes it had to be on a motorcycle. Or else it would be Che guevara without the rebel inside, like a sea without salt in it . Incomplete.
We Indians attach a deed to an age and to my age then, was attached, marriage. I willfully married and happily I settled. I was four motorcycles old then, the last of them being a Honda CBX 550. A four cylinder with custom twin exhaust. One fine day the head gasket blew off and I parked the bike in a corner. For no particular reason, the motorcyclist in me walked away from me, when I walked away from my bike. There were far too many things to be sorted out , work was hectic, and I enjoyed the changes in my life. The earth beneath grew on my motorcycle and the Michelin tyres dug deep into the sand. The spatter of rain drops stuck mud to the cylinders, paint perished, birds empted their little bowels on the seat leather, little did they know the legacy of Japanese inline fours. Bird brains I say! The leather perished, crows feasted of the foam beneath. The bike was too far away from me even when I passed it every day . Like leh and Ladakh, miles of roads and scores of milestones, millions of possibly eventful seconds, multitude of colors, diversity of forms, tarmac , gravel, faces, encounters and the joy of living lay idle between me and the motorcycle which stood rusting few feet away from my doorstep. 08 months later, I sold the bike. When Wesley came to take the bike away I gave directions over the phone. I was away at work.
PART III
My left side seems to have aged more than my right side. 18 white hairs on the left side of my moustache and only 4 on my right. With 15 on the left side of my beard and I had only 2 on the right. I wondered why my left side burns were more peppery than my right. On a Saturday morning I sat for hours counting my white hair. I was about to be a father soon and there was a lot to be done. An hour late to the gynecologist and she would be gone. Time, tide and gynecologists wait for no man. On the day before, I had entered one of the fuel tanks of my ship to spot a leaking pipeline. The smell of fuel, grease on my face and the congested space somehow made me feel at home. For no particular reason forgotten familiarities had rushed back into my head. And on this Saturday in question when I finished counting and accounting the whiteness on my facial hair, I realized that it was not the left side of my brain which got old but the left side of my mind, rather the side which I had left behind. The side which longed for the mountains and the roads less travelled. The side which put the rebel inside Che Guevara and added salt in the sea. The motorcyclist in me who walked away for no particular reason was back. I never questioned myself at that. Neither about the departure, nor about the homecoming. After all , causative analysis and reasoning makes no sense to the biker. They are to be discussed within the confines of four walls. Office rooms, conference halls, auditoriums, and the like. We all live a part of our lives out there, discussing market strategies, deciphering annual sales growth graphs, eyeing the corner office, impressing the pretty girl, avoiding the snobbish boss, waiting, fighting, quarrelling and caressing. We might even use our right legs to accelerate and find creature comforts on four wheels and a spare wheel in the boot. Its all forgiven because a true blue motorcyclist lives in the heart. The normalcy and reality of life hits you abnormally hard, like the wind you part with your shoulders when you redline the speedo on a deserted highway, but remember, the biker in you always comes back. I am sure because mine did and boy it came back with a bang.
Remember: Strap on the boots, Zip up the leather jacket, visor down and gloves on. We are gods fighting with aerodynamics.
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