Note to the Readers: This is my first attempt at writing a short story for the public viewing, the hundreds more in my head and in a few scraps of paper here and there will come out depending on the outcome as to how well received this is going to be. Have a relaxed eye over mistakes when reading it but do tell me afterwards, i would really appreciate direct comment as there is no need sugar-coat anything. If there is something wrong tell me so, and i'll definitely correct it in the next one because when i read a story i would expect the writer to take the brickbats without complain. So here goes hope you like it


I remember when I was a small kid 7-8 years old; I used to be scared of bikers especially the one’s who rode a Bullet because at that time there weren’t much variety as there is now, so the whole two wheeled junta was either 100cc commuter bikes or 350cc Enfields, not counting the ever popular Chetak then. So it was pretty obvious for me that if you rode a Bullet without being a Cop or an Army Officer, the other two types of people whom I was scared of apart from the Biker, then you are a Biker to me.

And in my eye’s anyone who chose to have a Bullet over other bikes meant that they were not the people of the same cut as others. And like every other Indian my basic education on character analysis came from the movies I watched, my opinion of a person was from my comparison of him with some familiar celluloid character. And always the bad guy seemed to have a black 350cc Bullet. So whenever I heard a bullet on the street I used to cower with fear, and go under the sheets, if I was on the street and God forbid a bullet were to approach from a distance, I would hide behind my mother praying not to be spotted till he passes by. At that time I looked at all bikers as if they were characters from the infamous biker gang “Hell’s Angels” or like the one’s in Mel Gibson’s “Mad Max”, leather-clad hunks roaring down the highway with no respite, no rules, no laws. If someone were to tell me that when I grew up I would end up a biker myself, I would have cried myself to sleep for three days praying to God that I’ll be good and I don’t want to go to hell becoming a wayward Biker, because by my reasoning all Bikers went to hell because they were rebels with no souls and never listened to their mom’s and never drank their milk. They didn’t go to schools because the teacher was too afraid to say anything to them, because when they do they’ll get run over horribly by their elder (also Biker) brothers after school. They would get together around a bon-fire and talk of doing a lot of nasty things to the people of the town nearby. And all this was very well affirmed my theories when none of the relatives in my family owned a Bullet. It’s not that I hated them it’s just that when you are 7 or 8 years old being scared out of your pants and being intimidated feels the same damn way, it’s like how you would feel against a Principal of the pre-school you went to, you hardly know the guy and he wouldn’t even had laid as much as a finger on you, but still you would feel compelled to shiver like someone just poured a bucket of ice water on you. This was something like that, and the presence of that bike and its rider was something else altogether, arriving on the street it would almost instantly dwarf everything around it by a good measure of its size and sound. And I’ve never in my childhood seen a Bullet be ridden the way RX100’s were ridden, they seem to roll through the streets at their own pace and everyone else has to just follow. And no one can ask them any questions because there is no man who has questioned an Enfielder and lived to tell about it.
And my childhood days were being spent in this same fashion of avoiding eye-contact with anyone who rode an Enfield.

All was fine and dandy till that fateful day, it was Sunday and I was sitting in the living room thinking up ingenious ways of defeating a Biker by shooting him with a silver bullet or by tying garlic around his bike, if it works for mythical creatures why not Bikers (Bikers also had magical powers in the 90’s). When suddenly, I heard a very familiar but scary metallic thump, growing closer to my house. I paused for a minute thinking it would pass by since I had been a very good boy that whole week, I even ate the particularly pungent tasting spinach, my mother had made two days ago. The sound of the Bike abruptly stopped; and out of curiosity. I walked towards the window near the front door to take a look, and breathed out a sign of relief. There was a polite looking man walking towards the door, he looked very neat and respectable and his eyes shone with such brilliance, that it looked as though he was constantly smiling even though the rest of his face were quite sober. And I called out to my mother to come and open the door as the door-bell rang (I was not supposed to open doors for strangers), and when she opened it her face opened up with recognition as she saw the man at the door. She ushered him in with feverent excitement and enthusiasm, my elder sister who bullying me till that instant suddenly dropped her shenanigans and started paying her full attention to the visitor, like she used to whenever she found someone handsome and my father who had till now firmly placed himself behind a wall of the Sunday paper jumped out of his chair to greet him, as this quite a rare sight to see my dad to consider someone more important than his Sunday paper and coffee that I thought this must be quite an important person, so I put on my best face and went before him to invite him home. He looked at me and smiled with genuine warmth that I felt immediately compelled to like this person even though we had only just met.

He had quite a face his features very clear, he had sculpted nose and a strong jaw, he had a lithe frame and I could perceive that he was quite muscular. He called me to his side and I when sat beside him I could see that this person had a very infectious nature about him, he seemed very amiable and funny, and held our attention firmly in his grasp at all times. Whenever he cracked a joke he had the rest of us in splits, whenever he narrated a story we all would listen with rapt attention. I was very much impressed at his ability to be so encompassing over a wide variety of subjects. We had him over at our place for lunch, and we were all working at making it as perfect as we could for him. Over lunch he told us about the places he had been and narrated some exciting adventures he had gone through, he told us about how once he had escaped from road bandits on a desolate highway when he was stranded, it seems he stood underneath a tamarind tree didn’t speak a word and kept staring into a distance, it seemed to work because as per local folklore if you stand underneath a tamarind tree at the middle of the night the devil comes to steal your soul. And this scared off the bandits senseless, and they ran off head over heels; he then walked five kilometers to the nearest petrol filling station to phone for help. And by this time I was in deep awe of the man, he was Indiana Jones and he was having lunch at my house, he was James Stewart’s Indian version if it wasn’t for my mother I would have asked for an autograph from him. After lunch was over he thanked us graciously and told us that he was taking all of us to the nearest ice-cream parlor as a sign of thanks for the lunch. Dad tried to decline the offer politely but then he turned to me and asked, “What do you say fella? You think your game for a big scoop of chocolate almond fudge” oh how he knew where to get the right answers from “Yes, yes, yes” I replied jumping up and down with excitement “Papa, please papa can we have some ice cream?” begging my dad with my innocent doe eyes. We all got ready my dad, mom and my sister and were about to leave on the scooter, when I said I wanted to follow them along with our guest on his scooter. Dad started his scooter and moved ahead and I walked to the front gate, and nearly fainted at the sight that awaited me there…………………………………..


The story will continue shortly, but first you will have to give me your feedback on the story so far (There are always two sides to a coin). Please and this my humble request that members don't post any of their guesses or their twist of this tale NOW!, When i finish this story then we can go about picking at it with a fine comb. Thanks