Life after 100

Well it’s been just over a year. My bikes’ crossed the 10000 km mark during the first week of December this year while riding back from Hypnos with Chris. The best part is that it has blossomed into one of the finest machines I’ve had the privilege of using. It seems to get better with age like wine. And to top it off I’m getting a little cocky on the roads these days. I wouldn’t be too far off the mark by bragging that my skills have vastly improved from the nervous-wreck glancing furtively every time a vehicle comes too close to the more laid-back what-the-fuck come-what-may mofo that I’ve become. Ain’t no two ways about it!

Looking back, there are lots of little incidents that took place during this one year span. I remember the time, about eight months back, when I went to an underground party with Steve. It was around 2am in the morning on Hosur Road. There was a bye-lane that we needed to take in order to get to our destination and we ended up crossing it by around 20 odd meters. We had to backtrack coz there was no way to get to the other side of the road. So we ended up backtracking the way we came, in the wrong direction of traffic flow. I dimmed my lights to just the parking lights reasoning to myself that the truck-drivers roaring down from the opposite direction won’t get disoriented and drive the metal beasts down our throats! Big mistake! There were no other lights in our immediate surroundings. So I ended up not noticing the deep ditch on our side of the road. Eventually while trying to stick to the side of the road, the front wheel slipped at the edge and we tipped over. It was, in retrospect, not much of a fall and we were not hurt either coz we were riding really slow. But the handle-bar ended up getting twisted to an impossible angle. That, more than anything else, freaked me out. You would understand what I had felt then if the ZMA was the first bike you’ve ever had and that too for less than 2 months.

A couple of weeks back, I rode to Ramnagar with Karthik and co for a bout of rock climbing and stuff. There were a couple of Royal Enfield Thunderbirds giving company to my ZMA at an average speed of around 110 to 120 kmph on the Mysore Road. We had an unhindered view of the open blue skies with the sun perched comfortably over our heads, the black tarmac screaming past under the wheels and the wind whistling a tune that can be heard only at such speeds. You have to experience it to know what I mean when I use the word “breathtaking” in this context. There was not a single four-wheeled contraption on that highway that came anywhere near to the speeds we were hitting and the sight of us smoking all those Marutis, Toyotas and Mitsubishis made the ride even more sweet. There is an altogether different way of life existing on the other side of that 100kmph mark and you’ll never experience it in the cocoon of your four-wheeled tin-can my friend!

Christmas Eve at Ramnagar

December 24, 2005. Ramnagar, Karnataka. Tumbling over the face of the rock, I had a fleeting glimpse of what might be described in simple terms as "the end". The thought did not last very long as everything just froze in my head. For the first time in my life my mind was unconditionally clear as the body clinging to it raced to meet the earth 40 feet below from where it was stationed while rappelling down the face of the rock. My vision was a maddening amalgam of the sky, the rock and the earth all overlapped into each other like a nightmare envisioned by a crazed artist high on absinthe. And then with a thud I landed on my back next to a tree trunk with my eyes still open.

For what seemed an eternity I just lay there. The only indication I had that I was still alive was my heaving chest and my burning hand. I could hear Karthik yelling something from way up high on the rock but I was still in a shocked state to make any sense of it. Mahesh came running up and stopped well short off me. Emotions rolled off his face that included shock and relief and he seemed to be finding trouble putting words together. Not that I was doing any better.

Surprisingly, I could not feel any other pain except for the burning sensation on my left hand which started getting agonising by the second. I got up on my feet gingerly with Mahesh's help and was further amazed to find that I didnt feel any broken bones anywhere. Mahesh started yelling to Karthik that I had fallen and that he should pack up the ropes and equipment and get down asap to get me to a hospital. I told Mahesh that I was okay except for my hand. Examining it I found that most of the skin and flesh had been ripped off while trying to hold on to the rope during the free-fall.

Karthik came bounding down eventually. But the wait was unbearable as my hand started throbbing with excruciating pain. I started cussing but it didnt help much. To get my mind off of it I talked with Mahesh and we ended up agreeing that it was a close shave indeed. I realized that if I had worn a glove on my left hand I would have come out of this incident totally unscathed. But be that as it may, the realization that eventually dawned on me was that for the briefest of moments I was knocking on Grim Reaper's door. Not a pleasant thought. But in the months that followed it certainly reaffirmed my belief that life should never be taken for granted. Live it!

Arctic Dreams

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.

--Barry Lopez

Fight Club

This is one movie that just engulfed me, held me in a vice-like grip and at the end of it all the only word that escaped my mouth was "Shit!". Same reaction... every single time I see it. Hell, I'd say that this is one of the most quotable movies of all time and these are some of my favourites.


"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

"And I wasn't the only slave to my nesting instinct... the people i know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue. You buy furniture... you tell yourself, this is the last sofa i will ever need in my life... buy the sofa, then for a couple of years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled... then the right set of dishes... then the perfect bed... the drapes... the rug... then you're trapped in your lovely nest, the things you used to own, now they own you."

"You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world."

"Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."

"She was like the crack at the roof of your mouth that would heal if only you could stop licking it... but u can't!"

"It's a bridesmaid's dress. Someone loved it intensely for one day. Then, tossed it... like a Christmas tree. So special, then bam!!... it's on the side of the road... tinsel still clinging to it... like a sex crime victim... underwear inside out... bound with electrical tape."

"We're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need."

"I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may. "

"And then... something happened... I let go... lost in oblivion... dark and silent and complete... I found freedom... loosing all hope is freedom!"

Adaptable philosophy

If a couple of thousand years are not suddenly sliced away for men and this bridge demolished in order to teach men to begin with the problems of actual life and existence, everything is unhinged. We confuse the existential problem itself with its reflex in the consciousness of all the generations of the learned. The main issue in regard to every existential problem is its significance to me; after that I can see whether or not I am fit to discuss it learnedly.

Soren Kierkegaard.
Journals & Papers, Vol.1 [p453],tr. Hong & Hong, Indiana U.P. 1967.