Road Rage..

Mornings were never my thing. I have been accused of a lot of things but I've never been accused of being a morning person, whatever that may mean. So my foul mood was a given since I had been dragged out of bed at 5 30 a.m. and put in the driver's seat of our car. This was dad's doing. Ever since he's retired, he's declared himself too old to drive unless he has run out of options. Mom says he gets a kick out of sitting in the back seat while his sons drive him around. In any case, thanks to a combination of factors, not the least important of which was the fact that my aunt and her family who were visiting us needed to catch a train at 6 a.m., I was staring bleary-eyed out into whatever bits of road were illuminated by the headlamps. I made a mental note to myself to get the lamp checked; the dim was focused too low on the road. 

Having accomplished the task of making sure my aunt and family caught their train, we were on our way back. I was too sleepy to talk, and dad must've understood that since he was silent. Stray bits of conversation revolved around what route to take back home - I was unsure of my hometown roads and they had changed a lot in the decade I was away. As we reached the dual carriageway near palarivattom junction, I got into the inside lane with a plan to gun it and head home to bed as fast as possible. As I was about to place my reputedly heavy foot on the accelerator pedal, a mini-lorry overtook us on the outside lane and then cut in front of me without warning. I had to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision, and we were both shaken out of our silence. 

The first thing that came to my mind was an expletive, but I have over time developed the ability to shut my potty mouth when my parents are around. I was indignant. I had done everything right, and if the lorry wanted to overtake, all he needed to do was indicate that and I would've got out of his way. I floored the pedal and the car lunged forward. 

"What are you doing?", said dad. 

"Catching him," I said. "He can't get away with this." 

"Let it be," said dad. "It's pointless trying to teach him a lesson" 

We were gaining on him. "If people don't tell him he's an ass, he'll continue pulling stuff like this", I said. 

"He could be a thug". "Don't worry, nothing's gonna happen". 

When that change of track didn't work, dad fell back to his earlier point that the lorry driver will not get the message. I was right on his tail, looking for an opening to overtake. I was going to do this right, without stooping to his level of overtaking on the wrong side. Dad was telling me that it was pointless getting angry at people on the road, because there were simply too many of them. He prided himself on driving all his life in a way that had caused no one ever to get angry at him. I remembered the time when I had started driving, and he was ashamed when my overconfidence once caused a policeman to shout at us. 

I got my opening, and the car surged ahead of the mini lorry. Dad paused for a second and said, "It's an old man." 

I shot ahead, cut in front of him, and slammed the brakes, forcing him to do the same. Dad rolled down the window, shook a fist at him, and returned to lecturing me about how it was of no use getting angry at an old man who would probably continue driving like this for the rest of his life. As we drove off, I marveled at how he could teach me the right things while still playing on my team. 

I daren't tell him how I tried something similar with a bus driver while I was on my motorcycle. 

Summer story..

Long-winded childhood story again, kindly adjust :)

A walk around the house is customary every time I visit the ancestral home. As I pass the western side, I always look over at the small cottages across the road, in my uncle's property. They used to be tourist accommodation in our little beach town. The tourists never came in the numbers my uncle had hoped for, possibly because our land was a good three quarters of a kilometre from the beach. They have been rented out as one bedroom dwellings for not-so-well-off families. My uncle, like many others, left for the Middle East, and that was that. As I walk, a story from long ago pops up without fail, every time.

For purposes of this story, we'll call him Mark.

I don't remember his name anymore, except that it began with the letter m, and was short. Could have been Mike, but that's not important. Mark was the first white person I had ever met. Sure, tourism brought lots of white folk to our beaches, and I'd seen many of them before, but Mark was the first one I got to know. It was another of those afternoons when grandad, often for no seemingly apparent reason, would get in the car and head to our ancestral home far away from the city. During the vacations, I would pile on, perhaps my brother and a cousin or two as well. This was not a particularly satisfactory arrangement for my mom and aunt, who knew that their father required more supervision than us kids to stay out of trouble. But the peace and quiet of a day without us during summer vacation, when we were otherwise wreaking havoc on their nerves, won the battle in the end and we were all packed off in the car.

This particular time, though, I was alone. Instead of bringing something sensible along to while away time, like a book or some toy cars, I brought a chess set. Who exactly I was going to play with was a question that would cross my mind only after I reached my destination. Our driver didn't know how to play chess, and refused to learn giving the logic that I was going to win all the games today if i played with a beginner like him, and I couldn't refute that. Grandad had some work, so I didn't even bother asking. But all I had for the whole day was a chess set, and finding a partner to play with was my immediate concern. Our driver, Deepu (chettan -omitted hereafter due to laziness and not disrespect), and I set off to find someone to play with. And that took us to my uncle's tourist cottages.

They were newly built then, and had a weird smell to them. The faint smell of cement and paint, mixed with that generic antiseptic smell a lot of hotels have. We heard he had managed to rent out a coupla cottages to tourists, and we were hoping the tourists brought their kids along, and maybe one of the kids would want to play chess. Not having done advanced mathematics back then, I did not know what long, long odds I was shooting for. The cottages seemed deserted, ostensibly because the tourists had all gone to the beach. Looking around, we spotted Mark.

He had one of those faces with character, the sort you remember for a long time. I remember more of his face than his name today. I asked Deepu if he would go ask him if he wants to play chess. He went over and talked to Mark, while I watched from the distance. I was too shy a kid to approach someone as strange as he was. Deepu came back a while later, and I eagerly asked him if a game was on. He had forgotten to mention chess, and I was quite annoyed. Deepu egged me on and said I should go ask him, he seemed a very friendly guy. After much prodding, and a coupla false starts, I was on my way to ask a mystifying creature, a white man, if he wanted to play a game of chess.

I held out my pride and joy, a small magnetic chess set that would also let you play five other games of which i knew only Ludo and Snakes and Ladders, and asked him if he wanted to play chess in a voice that diminished quickly as i realized how much of a giant he was. "Sure," he responded, "but on one condition. We'll play it on my board." Out came an exquisitely carved wooden chess set, and I was smart enough a kid to realize that if he travelled with such a good chess set, he must be really into the game. As the game started, I worried about this misadventure. As kids, there are specific rules on not talking to strangers, rules the kids in my family flagrantly flouted. But this was different, he was a foreigner. Not everyone in a tourist town likes foreigners, and the average attitude of the populace is that they're a necessary evil. Most people not directly involved in the tourism industry would just mind their own business, and avoid interacting with the tourists. The tourists who came to beaches to party had a particularly bad rep, and we would be told about their drinking, drug usage and generally loose morals, and that we should stay clear of them. I wondered for a second what amma would think about me playing chess with a complete stranger from Australia, which I had managed to find out about him by then.

We played chess and traded stories all afternoon. It wasn't a fair trade, I suppose, I had really lame stories back then. But his story changed my life a little bit. It was his second visit to our town. When he came the first time, he had fallen off the beach facing cliffs our town is famous for, after having had too much to drink one night. As I was processing the moral implications of him drinking enough to fall off a cliff, he continued. He lay there dying, in pitch dark, until a local drug dealer found him and took him to the hospital, thereby saving his life. My mind was trying to wrap itself around the concept of a drug dealer, since I had no idea how drugs were dealt. He returned to Australia, and sent his saviour a large and undisclosed sum of money in gratitude. The dealer quit his trade, and started something decent though i forget what, and was getting along fine until the cops caught him. He was accused of getting the money through selling drugs, and was jailed. Getting him out was Mark's mission, and he had come back to stay and fight his case for as long as it took.

For a child's black and white concepts of right and wrong, this was a major revelation. I could not immediately process this new information, and indeed it took me years before I fully understood it. Over one afternoon of chess, where I was fascinated by his stories and elated over my game victories, I was introduced to the concept of grey. I knew the guy was good, only a good guy would fly all the way back to save someone from going to jail, even if that someone did happen to save his life. I knew from being told that drinking and taking drugs was bad, and even though he didnt mention taking drugs, I somehow assumed he did. Having only met people who were easily sorted into 'good' and 'bad' bins until then, I went home stumped, and years later, was grateful.

Almost a decade after he'd gone, and never having amounted to much at chess and thereby having given up the game long ago, I realized he was probably letting me win that day. I put him in the 'good' bin.

Suffering Catfish..

There were many such afternoons before this, and many after. While the adults were either asleep or watching TV, us kids had all descended on the little bridge over the canal just outside of our colony. I guess the grown-ups were rather happy to have us off their backs for a few hours. We were engaged in one of our favourite post-monsoon activities - fishing. The rains would bring water into the canal, which would first wash away all the bushes that had filled its waterless bed over summer, and then, once the rains had gone, there would be fishes. And we would go fishing.

There were many ways to do this, none of which we were really all that good at. Mammoonju, the local grocer, would keep fishing hooks and twine, which we acquired for a buck and fifty paise. A shrub in the neighbourhood would lose a long-ish branch, and we were in business. Worms would be dug and speared on the hook, a bit of thermocol for a bobber, and all we had to do was wait. We never caught much fish this way, maybe less than a dozen in all the years combined. On the few occasions we did catch one, we never knew what to do with it. The first time we caught one, bigger boys from the colony nearby told us we should put fevicol on its lip over the hook wound so that it would heal and we could keep it as a pet. The only reason that fish lived was because amma's suspicions were aroused when she saw us heading towards the garage with a bottle of fevicol and a bottle with the fish in it.

As we grew older, and dare I say braver, we began to get into the water. We would take old towels from home, stand at a suitable place downstream with the towel stretched across the flow, and someone would chase the fishes from upstream. We would catch many, and were suitably gladdened. But of course, soon we wanted to catch bigger fish. Catfish were the holy grail, because they hid in cracks between rocks. The same cracks also housed water snakes, and that was the main reason why fishing in the canal was a clandestine activity. The adults should never know.

Which brings me back to the afternoon. We had seen the boys from the other colony catch huge catfish by ferreting them out of their cracks and chopping them with long knifes while they were still in the water. They took home their prize to cook. We wanted one for a pet, a catfish would've made a very cool pet. We had spotted one in the cracks beneath a little bridge that ran over the canal, and for the first time, we were venturing under it. The fact that it was almost pitch dark under the low bridge made it even more of an adventure. For at least an hour we searched, and even the kids who normally wouldn't get into the water were braving the possibility of water snakes in search of the holy grail in juvenile ichthyology. Since there was only one towel, the others were carrying plastic covers in desperation.

After an hour, spirits were flagging, and I was looking a bit worried as my brother went further under the bridge than all of us had dared so far. Even that intrepid move did not produce the catfish we were after. Just as we were beating retreat and coming out from under the bridge one by one, I looked at Jeffrey. Jeffrey did not particularly like getting wet in the dirty water of the canal, and rarely shared our enthusiasm for such hands-on fishing. He was standing there in the water, his arms drooping, looking as dejected as the rest of us, when a small fish jumped into the air in front of him. I saw his hand move quick as a flash, and the next thing I know is that the fish was flapping about in the plastic cover he was holding. He had snatched a fish out of thin air! The ecstatic scene that followed was not dissimilar to a football team who had just scored a goal. We had just seen the single most amazing thing in our short lives that far. We did not get the damn catfish, but we went home with grins plastered to our faces. No grown up could be told the story. No one would've believed us anyway.

A wedding + roadtrip, and some disappointment..

The wedding + roadtrip:

Two very good friends of mine, Sooraj and Asha just got married. I'd been pretty kicked about it since the time Sooraj called with the news that they're getting married, and had decided immediately that i was going no matter what. i'd been wanting to do a roadtrip on the bike as well, since it had been seven months since i did a serious long ride. this was the opportunity, and i guessed sooraj wouldnt mind since he's already set the bar with his delhi-kerala trip. Pgt agreed to ride pillion, since he'd been saying for a while that he wanted to come along on one of my trips. whether he'll come again for another one is a different matter, but go we did.

The plan was to head via coorg and hit the northern end of kerala at kasaragod, and then ride south on NH17 to kanhangad where sachin lives. From there on i would be without a pillion since the two of them would head to kannur by bus for the wedding, while i'd make it on the bike. Sooraj had arranged a resort for all of us to stay the night, and about 15 people from NID were already there to begin the festivities. The ride there was pretty uneventful except for a bit of rain once we crossed the kerala border. Coorg, as expected, was stunningly beautiful in the rains. it was glorious riding all the way to madikeri, with green rolling hills on either side and small sleepy towns punctuating the ride. the misty mountains on approach to madikeri made my day, as we shot through them covered in a light spray from the morning drizzle.

Once the roads took a sudden turn for the worse, we figured we had crossed the kerala border. the flurry of checkposts soon after confirmed it. we played hide and seek with a snaking river all the way to kasaragod, and then landed at sachins house for a sumptuous lunch cooked by his mom. the animal kingdom had taken quite a hit on their population to feed us that afternoon. i headed off immediately after lunch for kannur, and made a halt at payyannur where sooraj lived. Now, i have a constitution's worth of rules for myself when it comes to bike trips. These vary from the intensely pragmatic to the ridiculously arcane. and on each trip, i end up breaking at least three or four of my own rules. the rules i have regarding prior trip planning are usually always broken, but this time in addition to those, i broke a big rule that i had. 'Never ride to Kerala'. One reason was that most places i wanted to ride to in kerala would take me via my home town of cochin, where the risk of running into someone i know was a bit high. i couldnt ride home since my bike would be immediately impounded and my name would be deleted from the ration card. the second reason was that the traffic in kerala is insane. i take public transport as much as possible when i'm there, i dont quite think im enough of a maniac to survive driving there. plus, it'll add a few years to my age overnight.

so this time, that rule was broken, since i wouldnt be driving much in kerala, and kannur would mean that i dont have to go anyplace where there's a chance i'd run into someone i'd know. my pre-trip planning was sloppier than usual, and i neither had a toolkit nor any spares. i got sloppy on that count because the bike had never given up on me on any trip so far. well, this time she did. at payyannur, the bike wouldnt start anymore. so the groom-to-be, his brother and their friend came to my rescue and eventually we managed to start her up. at this point, i decided to visit sooraj's house anyway, and catch the argentina-germany match there. the story of that is dealt with in the second part of this post.

overall, it was a fun wedding. it's always nice to see the couple happy, instead of looking grim (which ive seen quite a few times elsewhere, by the way). sooraj was grinning like an idiot, and asha had her sweet smile as always, and we the friends were rapidly switching between making bad jokes and eyeing the girls in the auditorium. it was nice to have caught up with some old friends, and it was nicer to have made some new friends. with the wedding out of the way, it was time to head home. the next day was an all india-bandh, and since that would mean no petrol pumps, i couldnt risk a ride. so, right after a nice wedding sadya, i started off for bangalore. and i wished i hadnt.

each trip is difficult in one way or another, but this one was something else. as i made my way up the winding mountain roads on the ghats, the sky grew ominously grey. i rode as fast as i dared, aiming to cover as much distance as possible before the rains hit. that may have been a disastrous decision, in retrospect, since i was smack in the middle of nowhere when it finally started raining. i was surrounded by thick forest, there was heavy fog in patches, the last sign of civilization was about fifteen kilometres ago, and the road still kept climbing higher. since there was no shelter of any sort, i decided to keep riding in the rain, climbing higher and higher on the twisting road, with all my lights switched on so the oncoming trucks would see me. it was about four in the afternoon, but seemed like six thirty. there were no signboards indicating the route to mysore, and i had no map with me. i couldnt have opened a map in that rain, in any case. after riding about half an hour, i got this gut feeling that i was lost. there was no traffic now, only me riding around on a narrow twisting road flanked by forest on one side and coffee plants on the other. there was no place i could take refuge in or ask for directions, until i finally saw a shed in the coffee plantation, halfway up the mountain slope. I had to park on the road and walk halfway up the hill in pouring rain to find out from the guy there that i missed the mysore road a few kilometres back in the fog.

after turning back and finding the road, i took it all the way up the hills to reach the deccan plateau, and stopped for a chai. in what is becoming a tradition now, the five minutes i spent in the chai shop were the only minutes without rain. as soon as i hopped back on the bike, it was cats and dogs again, and i was cold, soaked and on the verge of giving up. i asked the shopkeeper about the roads ahead, whether they get better or worse. he told me that there's a bit of forest for twenty kilometers, apart from that it was ok. I was contemplating taking a room at the next town and riding the next day risking the bandh. At the very least, i wanted to sit it out till the rain subsided. I asked him how big the forest was, and he assured me that it's not a problem. somehow, i decided to press ahead, and that turned out to be a good decision. the small forest he mentioned was the fucking Rajiv Gandhi National Park, as i found out later. if i'd sat out the rain, i would most likely have run into the elephants there at night, given my luck.

after crossing the forest, i was back on familiar roads again. but there wasnt much sun or warmth, and the net result was that i was soaked all the way back to bangalore, and couldnt ride as fast as i wanted to since the wind was making me shiver. my shoes are still wet even as i write this, the day after the trip. i reached home at around nine in the night, with ample time to sleep since the next day was a bandh. and sleep i did, like a baby. if you dont count the snores, that is.

the disappointment :

the song goes, dont cry for me argentina. i damn near did. and im sure a lot of people in kerala did as well. i do not intend to turn this post into a discussion and dissection of their loss, since the reasons vary from the rational (lack of a decent defence) to the irrational (i wasn't wearing my lucky jersey that day). what i intend to do is focus on the madness that i witnessed.

at the outset, let me say that i am a huge football fan. i used to love playing the game since school, played pretty much in every game that happened in college, and still continue to play when i get the chance. i dont watch the game much on tv, but i still prefer watching football to any other sport. i own jerseys of argentina and my favourite clubs, spent a large chunk of my first ever stipend on a pair of (then)expensive football boots, and keep a football in office that i kick around when i'm bored. yet what i saw in kerala was quite something else.

in kerala, argentina and brazil have large numbers of fans. in a state not known for things like cut-outs of film stars and politicians, world cup footballers from literally the other side of the globe get huge cut-outs placed at road intersections by their supporters. and that was years ago, and that was something i'd come to expect. even in homes, there was a healthy amount of craze for the game. i remember my father waking me up to watch the match where roberto bagio missed the penalty. when i went for sooraj's wedding, the family there were all looking forward to watch the match, and i could see the expressions on at least some of their faces wanting the wedding eve visitors to leave quickly. sooraj included. he had made a bet that he would cut his ponytail if the germans won. i'm sad to report that in the end, he did.

so, given all this, i was unprepared for what i saw this time. when i went home the weekend before the wedding, i'd counted 400 argentina hoardings along the roadside from palakkad to thrissur, before i stopped counting. these were put up by local sports clubs, businessmen, groups of friends, even individuals. brazil had a sizable number as well, followed by lonely looking hoardings supporting germany, spain and the netherlands. i saw one each for england and portugal as well. shops had painted their shutters in the colours of their favourite national teams, i found out on a sunday. there were flags and other decorations hanging along every road and junction. during election times, back in the time when the rules regarding painting on walls was a bit more liberal, we used to see signs on walls saying 'Booked : CPI(M)' in anticipation of a coming election. I actually saw a big wall with 'Booked : Argentina Fans Association' on it, ostensibly in anticipation of an argentine victory. I know we're a football crazy population, but all of this seemed to me a little over the top. and in my list of irrational reasons for our loss, i added 'bad karma generated by an over-enthusiastic populace'.

let me explain that a bit. one of the boards said 'If the earth were a football, and the sky was the pitch, and the stars(of the astronomical variety) were the players, they would still be beaten by the brazilians in the final'. i doubt if coach Dunga would share the same assessment. heck i'm a die hard argentina fan yet even i had a feeling we would lose thanks to our rubbish defence. the text on quite a number of these hoardings were along similar lines. the day brazil lost, fans of every other team took out a rally together to gloat. brazil fans seem to be hated by a lot of people. of course, ten minutes after the argentine defeat, when i was on the road from payyannur to the resort sooraj had arranged for us, i saw brazil fans tearing down and burning argentina hoardings, and bursting crackers. a few friends who were behind me in a car,most of them brazil fans, were stopping and urging people to burn the argentina flags, and one guy they urged turned out to be a hapless argentina fan taking down his hoarding so no one would burn it. i was shouted at by one group that had congregated at a junction to tear down argentina hoardings for having committed the crime of riding past them with bright headlamps. it was mayhem, and i'm told i didnt see the worst of it that happened further inland from the highways.

i put the hoardings down to the fact that vinyl printing is much more accessible and cheaper now. anyone with a bit of extra cash kicking around can get one printed, and thanks to photoshop, they could be standing next to Messi wishing him the best. and a lot of people these days seem to be having just the right amount of extra cash kicking around. and any excuse to celebrate will do, i guess. i kinda had mixed thoughts about the whole thing. i was glad to see the love for the game, yet i was wondering if the whole rivalry and hoarding drama had gone a bit over the top, leaving the game in second place. i dont know, and dont see myself fit to judge, but i'll look forward to what happens in four years time.