Bringing Buddy Back

Sometimes. Sometimes taking these roads, push you to ponder over stuffs that came in and went out of your life. And sometimes, you have to push yourself to put your brains into something because the roads start taking toll over you.

I picked up Buddy from the Delhi service centre on 3^rd August. I had gone to see Buddy’s condition the previous day. It was a total make over. The tank was new. The headlights. The meter box. The handle. The front wheel. Everything new came in. While making my way into the service centre my eyes were searching for the MH27BK0742 number plate with the Doctor’s sign beneath it.

The month ago I was dying to get the bike designed to kill. Now. I was like, I am just happy to be alive. Two months back I had planned the Himalayan trip with just a nowhere eccentric idea to step out into the unknown. Just knowing that people do it. Some. Just some people. Driving out into the lonely dark highways around the Chambal ghati or the U.P riot struck border areas, or if that sounds easy for you, driving out into the dead of the night in the hell cold rains for a mountain ride. I was making my way to the gym in my campus through the short cut way through the jungle when I realized the words of my pharmacist Nautiyal “sir uttarakhand ki matti hai, ispe kabhi vishwas mat karna.” Those are the extremely slippery mud. A person can well slip down the inclination just in a standing position. When this mud attaches to your bike tyres and your bike weighs 200 kgs, the road is flowing with water, every now and then you bike tyres encounter the landslide mud, the chances of skidding down the mountain goes really high. And if even that sounds easy to you, imagine heavy rocks raining on you. A slip down the edge in a season like that means an absolute death.

Insanity sometimes just creeps into you like anything. Like blowing your head for a rank in your class. Or blowing your career for some emotional shit piece. Or something like this. You don’t know the limits or you just don’t care, that’s what defines insanity. Not exactly the words of Chris Hemsworth, from Rush, “the closer you are to death, the more alive you feel. It’s a wonderful way to live. It’s the only way to drive.”

Or. You could just follow the tagline of the movie – Everyone is driven by something.

And, insanity didn’t end there for me. I brought my bike back to Bharsar at 2 am. Started from Delhi at 2 pm. Took some snaps at Ganga riverside before Bijnor.

 Had thought of halting at Kotdwar or Lansdowne. But then some lunacy bug entered my head prompting me not to stop at all. I drove very very steadily keeping in mind of everyone who told me ride safe after the landslide incident. Frequently I would check the sky, which looked clear. I tried to follow a biker who was on his way to Satpuli but he ended up making me lead him. No one really wants to take the lead on roads like that. At that time of the night when the climate posed no threat, the threat was posed by wild animals. I wanted to see the spot where a driver had shown me one Cbz bike flown away by the flash flood in the river. It was on my onward journey towards Delhi that I saw the horrible condition of the bike and the way it was thrashed on the rocks in the river bed by the water that came down the mountains. We had asked the condition of the boy who was driving the bike and came to know the guy was in hospital. I would have taken few snaps of the bike but it had got really dark on my backward journey. Mountain people sleep very early. As does the temperatures drop down also. It was hard to find any single being to enquire if in case you take a wrong turn.

Its really not advisable to go out alone, on such roads, at such hours, in such weathers.

If anyone is reading this, please don’t ever be as crazy as me. My craziness was to such limits that I stopped my bike at 2 am on the mountains to take picture of the river which was shining beautifully in the moonlight. 

Later the people in my campus told me that the spot where I was standing was a frequent sighting spot for tiger. Ok. Crazy people do crazy things to bring you beautiful pictures of wildlife and awesome expeditions. But they always keep a company. Otherwise you just become just another Chris McCandless from Into The Wild. 

So. I am still ignorant about basics of photography. I need lenses. As usual, running low on money. Want to buy a leather jacket. The gym is not well equipped up here at Bharsar. I just hate mountain people. No Gods ever lived on mountains. Man just climbed up the mountains to fuck the nature that’s it.

I feel like tuning back to Tagore songs and sit quietly. Aar naaire bela naamlo chhaya. The song tells about returning back to home at the fall of dusk. I had knocked onto another beautiful song Amar Mawte Tor Moton Keu Neyi.. Really, I never met anyone as beautiful as you darling. Ha ha..

Hans Zimmer gave an awesome soundtrack to the Ron Howard movie Rush. With movie soundtracks, I did miss James Horner, the most precious of all soundtracks, the Titanic one. We miss you James.

I should get my name printed on my helmet, like these F1 guys. Ha ha ha. Just kidding. Well the rear prints on the bike, like Yaar anmulle, the Jatt & all.. the ones you frequently will get to spot around NCR region, the most number of Royal Enfields roam here only, so among these all rear prints, the Doctor sign is the best for sure. Come on. I roam too much. It’s a very normal thing to run your gaze on vehicles that accompany you on the highways and trying to figure out about the person on the driver’s seat. On such lonely highways, these vehicles that run with you mean a lot. Its not like my idiotic shitheads who bought an Enfield to take snaps of it by keeping it in their home backyard and posting it on Fb calling it an impotent beast.

And for the people who really roam a lot, its easy to get stories from them how they nicked death just like that. Its not difficult to find roamers up here on the Himalayas. And its not difficult either to listen to interesting stories how they saw a mountain rock running past them with a swish, or like evidencing mobsters doing arson stuffs, and many more stories which we simply enjoy in movies. One such fellow I got to meet is Thejus Jacob at my campus.

I want to drive to the sea now. Someday I will.

20 August 2015