First bike

When it comes to one’s most esteemed possessions, the motorcycle certainly sits in a high rank. Especially the first one we acquire. Though as we evolve as a refined man we ascertain that for comfy transportation we need four wheels, young men are always nutty enough to deal with with only two. There is an immense sense of triumph when we take it for the first jaunt on it and complete the assignment without falling over.

I bought a tiny moped when I was fifteen. I vividly remember that I spent the entire day on which it arrived looking at it. I didn’t even have a learner’s license when it was given to me so I couldn’t drive it. Weirdly the government doesn’t allow boys below fifteen to drive anything other than a bicycle, but the crones can get away from every sign at a velocity of ten with a determined expression. The local policemen were always delighted to nick a few quid from the enthusiastic school boys’ pocket money. When I was captured by the traffic warriors for the first time I didn’t comprehend what they were on about for half an hour. I couldn’t just drive away because they had in their possession my ignition key with my unique pink key-chain. After an extensive hush they started giving me an incredibly dreary sermon on traffic dangers and age constraints. Finally when my dad arrived at the cop’s corner, the place at the corner of a major interception where they had installed a permanent counter to aid their income, he was furious as he had to pay the man in suit five hundred quid of his hard earned bread. The cops on the other hand must be doing well; I mean five hundred quid here and five hundred quid there, they must have earned a fortune from other people’s misfortunes. I didn’t fancy making it rhyming there anyway.

Talking of my wagon, it was a TVS champ 50CC in RED. Though it was one of the most revolting things that money could buy, it was the best thing to me at that time. I had been beseeching my father for about a year to get it. And there was a vast conversation between my father and an uncle of mine concerning the speed of the thing and how hazardous it might turn out to be for me, for some half-wit astrologers had reckoned that some star was not where it ought to be and as a result I would almost certainly be run over by a lorry and quashed like a dumb highway toad. The damn thing couldn’t go fast at all, I once tried to give it all the beans for fifteen minutes on a long stretch and it only managed to achieve fifty, on a downward slope. It’s a shade faster than walking pace.

There was an assortment of troubles it came with though. The starter key could be taken off even when it is in the on position. It once fell from the slot as I was racing a scooter driven by a girl I adored. She was a remarkable thing, tall, had slightly curly hair and deep eyes. I would describe her as slightly divine. But boy, she could drive like hell. The green scooter perfectly suited her personality I thought. It was like a tiny nuclear powered rocket in her adroit hands and its engine was a good twenty cubic centimeters bigger in size and that mattered. Anyway talking of problems, as I needed to drive fast all the time to keep up with her I needed to deploy my brakes occasionally. There is always an elderly gentleman waiting to come on your way around every single corner in Indian roads and he would usually be a floweriest. Talking of braking now, she could do that with a tender pull of a lever. My brake shoes on the other hand were in fact my own pair of shoes if you know what I mean. I mean I had to help the brakes to stop the wheels unswervingly by rubbing the wheel or road whichever is easier, depends on the type of footwear and terrain and the process of choosing one is rather complicated to explain in this column. Another snag is that I never knew I was driving fast, relative to the Indian speeds. The speedometer always showed twenty nine. It took ten minutes to start the thing running, but I would already be doing twenty as per the Speedo. When it rains it is almost impossible to do it. You can push the whole thing running alongside and then crank the mill with the press of the clutch. I had run miles just to start the engine, if I can call it an engine. It could be called powerful if it was used in a motorised razor.

However horrific might be your first set of wheels I am sure that would be the most excellent thing you had ever driven. Let me explain. When you are immature you don’t have dough and you end up driving a pile of awfulness. But if you grow up you can buy an atom bomb for a few hundred thousand quid that is capable of accelerating from none to grave in three seconds. But when you are old you have a tummy and it looks disgraceful driving around in a two wheeler. Everyone becomes boring with age. So you are not going to drive any faster that you did on the bicycle. Or you may end up buying an eco box if you are hard hit by the fuel crisis and you need to save the planet for some unexplainable reasons, in which case you can’t move faster than a cow.

The first bike is sure to turn into a relic in everyone’s life. Yes, there may be a number of drawbacks to it but mostly it when you look back appears to be wonderful, wonderful and wonderful. There is a certain way you drive it, only you can or it would drift left continuously. There is a certain way you stop it and only you know it. Same is the case when it comes to starting it. It is something on which you learn driving, you have your first wound and became a member of the club. It may be slow, dull, cheap and useless. But only one thing matters, it is or it was yours.

Rehabilitation of a sundered heart

“Are girls fun?” is a question that has literally occupied to the maximum extent the minds of thinking men. A man like me who has not been in the company of the delicately nurtured very often and never wants to face the ordeal anyway may utter a sudden strong no. But answering this question requires what is called by the intelligentsia tact which certainly a man of such type would have no clue about. But what I can do now is narrate one of my experiences the gist of which says it all.

I once got a phone call from this girl who I used to know in college to come and meet her in a darned mall. I did, unpleasant of course. Hers is a very tender heart, the one which I’d readily recommend to anyone but it is too cloying to my liking. But she had always been after me with saucer lips and wedding rings.

We met in a bookshop and of all the books she could have liked me to present her she preferred Jane Austen for some extraordinary reason and went about advocating me reading such volumes of senseless awfulness. That’s the problem with her; she always tried to improve me somehow even though it was not actually possible. And when we were feasting on sandwiches I bought, I saw something strange in her eyes. Her face was sort of reddish and she was what’s the word, blushing I understood. Then she asked me, sweetly of course whether I was capable of identifying something in her eyes. I reckoned she had a weird type of fever and observing her womanly gestures that followed I learned that I must not have said so. She told me I was being romantic and I replied that I was just being entertaining. She then suggested that we go into a place filled with loonies in scary clothes known as ‘Cave of fear’ or words to that effect. In perfect darkness those birds wearing a mask jump in front of us from all directions, a head emerges from the stomach of a dead torso, something sticky falls on you from a calculated height. It was to me funny. But she had a different opinion of the matter. Suddenly she screamed, dived at me throwing herself into my arms except my hands were still trousered, clutched my shirt and put her face somewhere near my neck or she might have missed her aim by a few inches. I being very gentle administered a brotherly embrace but observing her adjusting herself to positions that were more comfortable to her, I began to get the gist of her stratagem. I might have sort of tightened the clamp a bit, but figured out the quickest route out of the place.

The next time I met her in another mall, girls always ask you to meet them in malls. So they can help themselves to your valet and buy some trifles like mobile pouch, carry bag, a ruddy teddy or trinkets. After doing shopping which includes the above mentioned essentials and others which I forgot we were in for a spot of coffee. Her eyes were foreshadowing the impending doom. She started talking about stars for some time and asked me how I might feel when self and her were left to our own devices in a lonely planet. I drank in a moody mouthful of coke. Then I told her I had an interview the following afternoon and slipped out of harm’s way.

Quite by an accident I met her again this time with a school pal of mine except that later and self had not been very matey. He was then a fat kid who’d not lend his pencils to others and bite the hands of those who try to touch them. Girls who are too sweet always end up falling in love with stabbers and scoundrels. At this point a normal chap would have what-hoed to him and try to explain the girl how good they were as friends and all that sort of thing, I mean trying to be a gentle man. I being a quick thinker used that opportunity to call him a fat blighter. And as the conversation progressed I found other ten or so fruity names that matched his appearance.

He obviously trying to be nice in front of the adored object was just laughing not being wise to say something witty. And I was in an absolute top form. At this moment a girl of a somewhat divine nature would have reacted negatively on my pejorative remarks on the slob of fat. One could observe pain in her little eyes. As her brows kept curling I kept ha-ha-ing and she exploded as predicted.

As you might have anticipated I had rightly analyzed the psychology of the individual, in this case you might call it reverse psychology and she who had refused to give him wedding bells once became engaged to him and brought sunshine back into my bachelor life. This narration I am afraid might have failed to answer the question raised at the beginning, but who cares.

The planetarium problem

When was the last time you asked someone about their plan for a weekend and they replied that they would rather spend their time in an art or a science gallery than in a theatre or a shopping mall? Obviously, going to a science gallery and getting surrounded by students of internal combustion is not a wise option. But the old science strain in my blood still being persistent I decided to give it a try. I mean, how boring could it be?

The outcome of all those thoughts was me standing at entrance of ‘Birla Planetarium”. I saw a beard with side whiskers inside the counter and a man announced the entrance fee through it which was not much I thought for a scene of space documentary, a 3D movie and a gallery visit. My first shock was that they wouldn’t play the documentary as the theatre didn’t have ample number of bricks. When I entered the building I couldn’t find pictures that would tell me something about space and that kind of clever stuff. All I found was a toilet which could by no means qualify as one and a periodic table with most of the elements removed.

Not being wise enough to think of anything else I drank a thoughtful coke. Then I headed for the 3D movie wherein I encountered a herd of boisterous and immoral school kids accompanied by a despondent teacher who was probably the idea behind infesting the place with kids unfit for consumption. I got a seat amidst these insects and the 3D thing was played. I was loudly protesting that the quality of images wasn’t satisfactory when a dark girl who looked at me like a stray dog would have looked when you pinch its hard earned bone. Then the despondent lady strongly advocated the use of a paper they call 3D glasses in a cold manner. Another old man with even bigger whiskers than the ticket counter chap seemed to support the lady and tried to smile at her. She being still grave and cold he abandoned that project.

That being a 3D show I expected some stars and meteors to appear to fall on us. But all I saw there was a picture of some trees, a mountain and a lake. Then the screen was filled with ugliness when some insolent monsters started running towards us making a great deal of clamour. A bitter faced small girl tried to wrong everyone by reckoning that they were crocodiles but even in distance I found that they were dinosaurs. As the noise continued to increase and I didn’t quite like the idea of facing those colossal wastrels, I quietly left the hall leaving the ruined kids to their own devices.

It was a frustrated I that entered the museum and to my relief it was empty and it was empty for a good reason. The main hall was filled with portraits of two political birds and I don’t like both of them. One was an immoral language terrorist and the other was a bearded atheist. Both shared a common opinion that when a student is from a community that hasn’t done anything worthy he or she deserves a place in good institutes.

The science section of it was even more depressing. It was filled with toy aircrafts, some abandoned engines, and miniature models of some landmarks that were made out of some school project but it had very few things to look at. It was very evident that it was poorly funded. Perhaps the politicians of today who try to ingratiate themselves with the names of those two birds had eaten away all the funds that are given to construct state of the art theatres and working models and had spent fifty p. for that darned portrait collection and some steel scrap.

So, such places exist just for namesake and there is not much you can see or learn there. And what’s more they are all named after those birds that haven’t got the slightest grip on the subject of science. They are all maintained worse than public rest rooms. Still if you want to pay them thirty quid that would be sent to a man in white and spend two of the most reproachful hours of your life, you can. But for the love of god, don’t.