AWESOMES - III

Two thirty in the morning.

It's cold without being chilly, it's gloomy without being completely dark. Trucks and buses pass you by, and other trucks and buses roar past the other way. There's hardly any cars out at this time of the night - that too, in the middle of nowhere.

Yours, of course, is the only bike you've seen over the past two hours.

On the road for the last 16 hours, cold and wet and chilly.

It's been raining through the day, and you've driven on through the unrelenting downpour. The rain's soaked through your jacket, and you are a wet bedraggled mess. There's a chill in your bones and every part of your body aches. You wish you could stop by the roadside, and cause a truck to pull over. Sit at the back, pay the guy whatever he wants, and sleep through the night in that damn truck.

Sleep. Blessed sleep.

But you won't stop. Can't stop. Because you know that on the morrow, you shall not be able to live with the fact that you gave in.

If this screwed up trip is to be complete, it shall be on the bike.

Because.

You wonder why you do it. Nobody in their right minds drives 750 kilometres in a day, 500 odd of it in pouring rain. Nobody climbs through one of the steepest ghats in the Sahyadris through torrential downpours. Nobody plans on riding through three states in one day. But once you've started on the trip it's got to be complete. That's what it's all about, man.

Don't you go about asking what 'it' is. Loser boy.

When you rub your toes against each other, you get a squelchy feeling in your socks, and you can feel your shoes drip out water. There's a small gap between where the visor meets the helmet and the wind whistles through it effortlessly. Your right foot slips every now and then off the foot peg onto the exhaust pipe, because you're so goddamn tired. And every now and then your helment bumps up against Noel's - causing you to shake off any lingering sleepiness.

And bhaisaab asks : "Dude, you awake na? Everything OK?"

And you ignore the aches, and the pains and the discomfort and wiggle in your sit.

A glance at the watch shows that your turn at riding is a long thirty five minutes away.

And you grit your teeth and grin.

"Haan brother, everything OK" you yell against the wind.

Ride on.