this one is on karan's plot and he's been kept waiting for upwards of a year for this.i just hope that it suffices,though.
frozen in time. he kicked the machine back to life.faulty new age bitch of a bike.ditched him on the fuckin highway.yup,they'd add an air intake shaft.but make it so that water seeped through to the ignition coupling every fortnight.living in a dreary rainy climate didn't exactly help either.so,a highway ride,as u can well imagine was proving to be abject bliss.the road loomed ahead.the weather was as chilly as his spirit.he had to keep wiping his runny nose every now and then on the back of his gloves.the collar lapels kept hitting his neck.the effect made him smirk,but it was nowhere close to comical.the kind of mental framework he had,u cud have said that he almost wanted it to be.but yes,he continued headstrong.no idea where he was going.with just about enough fuel to reach the outskirts of oblivion and return.
he dropped a gear,pulled hard on the accelarator,watching that needle on the tacho quiver and went back two days in his mind.back to when his marriage vows were being solemnised.felt like another life altogether.fragile dreams only as real as the wind whipping on his face,but now seemingly as intangible as the wind itself.dreams he had dared to fathom,but the kind he knew were as unsure as the road up ahead.he tried blotting out the memory of the woman who left.his wife who left.
there was no judgment to be pronounced here,no tags of being unfaithful,no string of abuses attached,hell,not even regret.he had always been too calm.panic never came easily to him.parents called it an overdose of complacency,college mates called it indifference with a slightly cooler quotient.the basketball team just called it a good thing,the inability to feel pressure.his colleagues at the firm called it blatant cold blooded behaviour.but hey,it worked so no one was complaining.but for once,he wanted it to wear off.there was a bloody rarety of occasions when he could feel,let alone good or bad.his euphoric moments were just about enough to be counted on his fingertips.as much as he tried to blot it out,it was when he'd dropped a girl back after a date about a year ago.regular night at a club.there's hardly anything one remembers after five manhattans.friend's friend,roommate whatever.hardly mattered now.general discussion.they were playing the techno dark knight radio edit of die another day.and by jove,the woman knew almost as much about james bond as he did.that was probably the first time he felt an itch to drop a woman back.worked fine for the next three coffee dates,and one consequently where there were quite a few manhattans and rusty nails and a lot else.
both of them were final year law students.placements coming up in a week or two.it was the only time he'd gone for his placement interview with his fly open and his hair messed up,and not felt bad about it.went well.so did the torrid relationship.the first day of his job and he went in with his neck looking like the plains of thermopylae after the spartan massacre.but again,he kept the cash registers ka chinging,so no one was exactly complaining.marriage was on the cards,not out of any corny delusion,but guided by the faith that this was the only relationship that would in all probability work out for him.true,there were the roses,the diamond ring in the bubbly,the works.but it was something to him that wasn't bondage but exhilaration,maybe at the easy attainability of the nigh impossible.but there it was,as real as the rain hitting his face right now.and till a day back everything had worked out picture perfect.a house,a BMW,an R1,the works.the fuck up was that she wasn't there anymore.
he reminisced the entire scene back to his final year in law school.how his friends warned him that it was a real fast one he was after, a lot like a hurricane on florida keys. by the time he would be aware of it she would already have drowned him through and through and left. or the extremely simple logic of his conservative parents that a woman with a tattoo could not have been a nice and faithful wife. all his collegues as well as the partner who simply believed he was too young and non wasted to get married yet.
he reminisced as to who was the culprit who had lured the parasitic bitch away. he wiped his runny nose, dodged a car, dropped a gear and propelled forward punishing the accelerator. was it the ex boyfriend in college. naah, could not be, he was even more of a loser than himself. could it be the torts professor who gave her good grades when there were better students around? nope. was it her boss? could be. well he was taller. funny thought. he'd been really blind to the slut's absentee nights. should have paid more attention. but yes, though he fully believed and supported her independance he'd never expected her to leave him so fuckin high and dry. when she'd left he'd called everyone he could, including her folks who had managed to apparently miss the last flight to attend the wedding. they were'nt exactly complimentary. no help there. he tried the cops. big mistake. they roped in all the rudest of possibilities, from his being gay to her millions of affairs. the over diligent retards didn't even spare the classic cliched possibilities of her having eloped with the office chauffer. he did all he could to stop from laughing in their faces. chauffer??? he knew better than that.
he stopped short of crossing the state border, parked on the shoulder. he took out a soggy cigarette and lit it with a wetter zippo. the first drag after the strenous riding for the past three hours was as good as mexican gold leaf marijuana. he took off his gloves and saw the calluses on his palm from the riding. his cell phone buzzed.he winced. another condolence call ,he believed, from a friend. what were they so sad about anyway? it was his wife who had run away. fuck it, a voice said. just shut it, its fucking over. he needed a break. against his better judgement he picked it up. neighbours. the cops were there. he asked them to stall it for a half a day. he would get back. they guy sounded pretty flabbergasted. something transpired on the phone and he listened. still calm he said he would be back asap. another minute of silence, he cut the call.
he sat down in the mud right beside the bike. the rain still fell on the bikes hot exhaust sizzling with the heat. he tried lighting another cigarette. could'nt. tried again. gave up, he felt the uncanny chill of loss and panic crawling up his spine again. his wife was a horrible cook. by far, one of the worst ever born. she'd said that she'd bake mushrooms the day after their wedding. it hit him like a migrane that she'd gone out to buy mushrooms in the morning. he finally managed to light the cigarette, coughed thrice and dropped down on his kness in the mud and broke down. his cigarette fell out of his hand and sizzled before it joined the mud around and got darker. tears ran freely accross his already rain and weather streaked face. he got up with some difficulty and screamed out in the impending dark night. he remembered and still tried to register what his friend had said over the phone. his wife had been hit by a truck the previous morning and the woman was carrying a packet full of mushrooms. so much for the lack of faith. his eyes glazed over. the calm was back. he got back on the bike and took the u turn and wrung the accelarator fully open. his bike was found in the valleys about ten kilometers down, a hundered metre straight drop. the body was not recovered.
