Motorcycle Diaries - Page II

Scared.

You should always be scared. If you feel no butterflies at the bottom of your tummy, if you do not glance around in apprehension at the traffic around you, if you do not scan the road ahead repeatedly, alert for the slightest sign of trouble, if you do not run over a checklist of what you have and what you should have got, in your head, over and over again, then turn back and go home.

Never set out on a long ride unless you're scared.

Of course, sixteen hours into the ride, you're dead tired, you wish the trip was through (am I infringing on copyright here?) you are no longer alert, you no longer scan the road, and you wish you'd left yourself back home, but that's beside the point.

At the start of the journey, your blood pressure should be a distinct point of worry for the family physician.

I believe I have mentioned this in passing, but especially so if the whole hullalaboo begins past midnight.

My helmet (which deserves a blog of it's own, and which it shall get one day) was in Pune, and while Noel had got one for himself; I'd used one that was lying around the house. Grey in colour, with a fake sticker of Castrol on it, it was designed for those with extremely small heads. And while the contents of my cranium (or the lack of it. Yes, of course. Ha ha.) would have fit in there a zillion times over, the packaging itself was rather large in size.

As is the case with the rest of my body, but leave that be.

Haan, so the point being, I was wearing a helmet that was decidedly small in size. And therefore bleeding uncomfortable. And when the journey takes about 19 hours to complete, that's no nice thing.

Noel was driving first, and the first challenge was to figure out which was the way to Hubli. No, no road map. Naturally.

So by a long drawn out process of iterative questioning, we finally got ourselves onto NH 4.

It's a smooth enough road to start with, rather heavy in traffic, even at odd hours of the night, with depressing uniformly ugly buildings on both sides of the road. In India, there is no surer way to tell that you are in the outskirts of a city. Small ugly, squatting buildings, painted either in an off putting faint yellow or a hideous pink, with small cast tiron staircases by the side. Mile after mile of the same, until finally the quality of the buildings begins to improve if you're heading into a city, or, the Lord be praised, they disappear, to reveal the Indian countryside.

Which is beautiful, peoples.

This took about an hour to complete, and we were finally in the Karnataka countryside. Not that we could make out much of it, since it was pitch dark, but now what to do?

Now for the twist in the tale. One of many, obviously.

The previous night, self and doppelganger had gotten palpably plastered at the residence of Soumya Mahapatra. Rum and beer, and other consequential odds and ends. I had slept through the day, but Noel had not. He had gone for work, and had been there for a good fourteen hours.

So why was he at the helm? You see, it was the devil or the deep sea types. Either we could count on the adrenalin lasting for a couple of hours, and he could then take it easy at the back, or we could let him take it easy at the back for a couple of hours, and then let him take over. One way or the other... and we chose the one.

Which was fine for the first hour or so.

After which, Noel's supply of adrenalin ran out.

The road had narrowed perceptibly, and it wasn't exactly smooth going either. I was at the back, eyes firmly shut, belting out one song after the other.

This has two advantages. One, you, with your eyes shut, are resting yourself. You ain't driving, you ain't concentrating on anything, you're taking it easy. Which is good news.

Plus, Kulkarni Junior trying to make it like Rafi Sa'ab or Kishore Da is guaranteed to frustrate the Buddha to bits. So anybody in the vicinity, like Noel, for example, is pretty much going to be awake.

But Castellino Junior is to plis not be underestimated, thankoo very much.

Bhaisaab, having spent a long hard day at work, finally decided to let the bike run on auto-pilot for a bit.

See, contrary to common sense and the laws of physics, it is possible to sleep while riding a bike. You can't, of course, sleep as in slumber. But you can let your eyelids become heavy, you can let your head drop, and you can be at the borderline of sleepfulness and wakefulness. I wouldn't advise it, and I didn't write that last sentence, but every guy who has gone on a long bike ride knows what I'm talking about.

What you can't do.. and decidedly so, is try and overtake a lorry on a blind curve. We suddenly found ourselves blinded by rather strong headlights and some frantic honking all around us. I unclenched my eyes and nearly emptied the old bladder right there, because we could make out a rather large and formidable truck bearing down upon us.

Noel woke up about half a second after that, and both of us contemplated the afterlife awhile.

But like I said, the entire pantheon up there was frantically working the cosmic levers and pushing the heavenly buttons, and they did a good job, because a deft zig by Noel, coupled with an adroit zag (for those truly in the know, that last turn of phrase was by way of tribute) by that wonderful specimen of Tata Engg. saw us home and dry.

There might have been the odd shaken fist and perhaps an ill-judged word or two about our ancestry, but you know how those truck drives are.

I patted Noel on the shoulder, a little shaken, and asked bhaisaab if all was OK.

Bhaisaab, who seemed a little James Bond Martini-ed himself, naturally replied in the affirmative, and we set off on our merry way again.

And all was right for the next twenty minutes.

After which, the road curved sharply to the left, and we didn't.

Rude jolts underneath us shook us to wakefulness again, and the weak headlight offered us a terrifying glimpse of large boulders, gaping holes and a complete lack of asphalt. Five meters ahead of which, we could see the road again. Noel could either have braked sharply, resulting in a surefire tumble into God knows what, or he could have grit his teeth, fired up the accelerator for all it was worth, and driven the bike through those five meters, praying for deliverance.

Thankfully, the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost... or far more likely, all three of 'em, with some outsourcing thrown in, were on hand to answer those Speed Post prayers. I'm not saying it was like the parting of the Red Sea, and no manna fell from heaven. There wasn't darkness for six days and seven nights, and no floods were spotted in the vicinity, but we made those five meters and stood by the side of the road.

Alive and decidedly jittery.

Castellino took the helmet off, as did I. We got off the bike and stood looking around us. We peed, and drank some water. We watched the trucks rolling past. Barely an hour and a half done, and about fifteen more to go.

Noel looked at me.

I looked at Noel. Grimace and understanding grin duly exchanged, I took over the rudder.

And what a time we had.