Driving Memories

Short Story

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I glanced left and saw the wife dozing off on a starry night as I drove across a rural landscape rendered hauntingly beautiful by the moonlight. It had taken many fights over the last few days and a trade-off on my side to take the car instead of the bike, that I was able convince her to drive the 200 kms to attend the family function. She had carried the somber mood in the car too, and the drive had been tense for me till she fell asleep. I reminisced about the times when the drives used to be enjoyable, when at every opportunity I would kick-start another night long expedition, and as I went down that memory trail that night’s memory came kicking back.

It was a rarity for me – working in office till late in the night. I am a morning person, and hence would be one of the first persons in the office and one of the first to leave. An impeding release had compelled me to stay back till 11 pm.

Just as I was leaving, I saw her – standing outside the exit gate, waiting for an auto. I knew that she worked on the same floor as mine, but apart from that I did not even know her name. On seeing her, the first impulse of a romantic – me, was to stop and offer her a lift, then the geek in me kicked in, I felt ‘odd’ about offering a lift to a girl I did not even knew and I drove past. About 100 meters later, something called humanity pricked me about leaving a colleague on road late at night. The bike completed an about turn, and I was back at the exit gate.

“Can I drop you somewhere?“, I asked and realizing she may or may not have recognized me added, “We both work on the same floor.“
“I recognized you and that would be really helpful, but I’d hate to bother you.” was her consolidated reply.

“I would not mind, and anyway at this time with almost zero traffic on the roads, the drive would be refreshing rather then a nuisance“, I replied.
She was hesitant, and looked around, “I’ll get an auto.“

I countered, “I doubt you would find an auto with ease this time, and even if you find one you’d be charged exorbitant rates. If I leave you here, Aman would never let me live it down“.
“Aman? Who is that?“, she asked.

I smiled, “That would be me“.
“That was a pathetic way of introducing yourself“, but she was smiling as she hopped onto the bike and said, “I am Shikha“.

“Nice to meet you. By the way where should I drop you?“, I started the bike.
“I live in Banjara Hills“, she replied and added, “And where do you stay?“

“I stay here only, hardly a kilometer away“, I replied.
“Now you are making me feel guilty again, because of me you are going so much out of your way“, she sounded a bit blue.

“Hey don’t worry about it a bit, driving at night is my mantra for relaxation. I frequently drive around the city in the late hours“, I said.
“Ohh, that is interesting. Aren’t you afraid?“, she seemed genuinely interested.

“Afraid of what? The empty roads? And for the record till date I’ve not encountered a single ghost asking for lift on the road“, I was smiling at the image.
I felt there were more questions coming forth and I was proved right, “Don’t you get in trouble anytime with the cops?“

“Trouble? Rather every time I am flagged down we end up having a nice chat since I’ve all the documents, and am never drunk while driving. Generally the cops are also bored at night and are always up for a bit of chit-chat“, I told her.
“But…“, she still seemed to have doubts about the safety of night time driving.

“Actually the biggest problem I’ve got in till now is a flat-tire. I had to leave my bike on the road side for the whole night, while I caught a call center cab to my home. That was a bad night, I was dead worried about my bike being stolen“, I shuddered remembering that night.
“You are so attached to your bike, the way you talk about your bike it almost seems you treat it as a human being“, I could almost hear the smile in her voice.

“For me this bike is my most prized possession. And after all it is only the bike that provides me company on all my drives“, I explained.
“Ohh, so you drive alone“, it was more of a statement rather than a question.

“Yep, I drive with only my bike for company, all my friends are sane enough not to sacrifice their sleep for a drive around in the night“, I replied.
“So the solitude is forced, not desired“, she said.

I shrugged, “Everything depends on the company. I love driving alone, and I love driving while talking to someone, actually I am really enjoying this drive with you.“
She smiled, “Good to hear that, even I am enjoying this late night drive. I could easily make a habit out of it.“

“Great“, was all I could manage when the perfect thing to say at this time would have been, “I could help you. Give me your number, I’ll call you whenever I am going for a drive. Then let’s see if you have an appetite for losing sleep whilst roaming around the near empty streets of Hyderabad.” This thought bubble hovered over my head for a while and as I was scrounging for remnants of courage to say that, the geek in me whipped out a pin and pricked the thought bubble. Any subsequent thoughts on these lines were quashed by the aforementioned socially awkward introverted geek.

A few minutes of uncomfortable silence – at least for me – followed.

“You can stop here. I live in the white building near the ice-cream shop“, she directed.
I stopped the bike and bid her adieu. I think she knew what I wanted to say, and waited an extra moment on the stairs giving me another chance, realized I was too damn afraid to say a thing, and went in.

As I came back to the present, glanced again at the warring, but sleeping, wife I wondered – what would have happened had I said those words, had I asked her out? Would this drive had been more enjoyable then?

I guess I’d never know.

–

Again, this is pure fiction. Thanks to wife for helping me form out the story around the conversation that I had penned

Weapon of Mass Hysteria

Writing a 55 after a long time…

–

Rajeev saw the cops undertaking a massive check. With no chance of evading, he searched for his weapon of choice.

Rolling down the window, he coughed hard into the handkerchief and asked, “Where is the Swine Flu hospital?”

The cop took few steps back and pointed ahead.

The paranoia had helped Rajeev steal another car.

Out of the Box : Harsha Bhogle

I have been reading Harsha Bhogle’s book Out of the Box over the last two days, and I am captivated. It is a collection of articles written by Harsha Bhogle over the last 5-6 years and it is such a delight to read them now with the added advantage of hindsight.

In the bookstore I also found the book that was released to celebrate Gavaskar’s 60th birthday – a collection of 60 articles by Sunil Gavaskar – Straight Drive. I read 2-3 pages of each before deciding to buy Bhogle’s book. The collection of Gavaskar’s articles are also very good, but just cannot be compared to the writing style of Harsha Bhogle. It is like reading match reports in Cricinfo and Times of India – ToI will tell you X batted well, Y bowled well, and Team-Z won; whereas Cricinfo will tell you all those things in such a way that you feel sorely sorry for missing the match, and make a promise to yourself not to miss the live telecast of the match next time India is playing.

Back to Harsha Bhogle’s book, it is really hard to keep it down. Each article is just 2-3 pages only, and has a footnote about whatever incident/match is mentioned in the article. I am opening the book at random, and reading whatever article I land on, and till now (I’ve read about 50% of the book till now), there has not been an article that I skipped over.

Out of the Box is a must buy for anyone who loves to read about cricket and all cricket lovers

Fuel Tales

As I am driving to the office, the fuel in my bike runs dry. And as is always the case in such scenarios I was exactly in the middle of the two closest petrol pumps. One was a km behind me, the other was a km ahead in direction of my office. I started dragging my bike towards the petrol pump, under the hot merciless sun (by the way, has the summer already started again in Hyderabad?)

Scores of bikes/cars passed by me, nobody stopping to offer any help (not that I expected any, neither did I ask anyone for a lift) till I had gone almost half a km. The upward slope had just started and I was cursing Hyderabad for having such hilly roads (when I am driving – not dragging – the bike, I actually love the hilly roads – perceptions change a bit too fast) when I saw a guy take a U-turn about 50 meters ahead. He came back, stopped by me, and offered to drop me off at the petrol pump. I thanked him, but told him that I’ve no bottle to get the petrol in, and I knew that the petrol pump also does not have any shop etc. It would be pure luck if I get a bottle there. Lo-and-behold, he fabricates a bottle out of thin-air. Says he has been in same situation 2-3 times and knows how bad it is to be in such a situation. As he dropped me off at the petrol pump, I thanked him profusely. My faith in humanity & fellow humans was restored. Next time I see anyone stranded without fuel, I am surely going to offer help.

–

Few hours later, I am back at the petrol pump, this time I drove my bike there to get some more petrol. There is a serpentine queue for the fuel, as only one of the pumps is working. Slowly I make my way ahead, and just as the guy ahead of me gets petrol filled and is about to move, a fat lady comes zooming past all the other waiting bikes, and plunks her Activa bang in front of me for fuel. My first reaction was wtf!, and I started shouting on her for not respecting the queue, and asked her to move back. As I had expected she completely ignores me as I was telling her what she was doing was wrong, and even she knew it, but surprisingly no other person in the line said anything, the two petrol-pump attendants – even they don’t say anything and start filling the petrol.

I’ve been going to that petrol pump every 10-15 days for last 4-5 years, and I have seen these attendants shout at people for breaking the queue, but I’ve seen them shouting at guys only. Since this was a girl who was breaking the line, nobody was saying anything. I never knew there was a separate “Ladies only Queue” at petrol pumps too.

Back to the story, I again say a few heated words to the fat lady, and her only reply, “Tum kyon wait kar rahe ho? Tumko bhi line tod deni chahiye thi.” (Why were you waiting? Even you should have broken the queue). My faith in humanity decreased many notches. I wish that fat lady’s activa runs out of petrol, and if I am around, I am surely not offering her any help.

Tadikalpudi Peak Conquest

The destination was the peak of the highest mountain of the Tadakalpudi Ranges at 2075 feet. The team comprised of Sridhar, Kosstubh, Guhan and me. I was the newbie in the group, the other three knew lay of the land as they had already been to these ranges, although the peak had yet to be conquered.

This time we did things a bit differently. We gave as much time to the preparation as much we gave to the trek. Maybe we even gave more time to the preparation, and trust me that was the one thing that drastically reduced our trek time. Each of us would open up Google Earth & Bhuvan-ISRO and would find out all probable routes for ascent and descent, marked out few spots that looked conducive to camping, found out as many paths and stream beds (which are the highways of the mountains) as we could, and in this way we chartered out three routes that we could follow.

Day 1 : 29th August, 2009

We reached Tadikalpudi just before 5 in the morning, and within 5-10 minutes we were on our way. The aim was to cover as much distance as we could before the sun gets too hot. To get to the base of the ranges we needed to cross fields, a small hillock, some more fields, and ground covered with shrubs & bush – a total distance of around 4 kms. Our plan seemed perfect, since the slope was east-facing, cover as much distance as you can before the temperature rises. What we had not accounted for (and could not have accounted for) was the very high humidity. It had rained heavily the day before and the sun was hot enough at 7:30 to turn the grounds around us into a sauna! Taking multiple breaks we laboured on. I was the worst affected, and was taking frequent breaks. Sridhar, Kosstubh, Guhan helped me with my backpack twice and just kept egging me on. During one of the short breaks, Sridhar said a simple thing which proved really helpful to me for rest of the ascent – time your steps with your breaths. As Kosstubh put it eloquently – “Chhoti, par moti baat“.

The steep climb, the ascent angle would have been easily 50-60 degrees.

The ascent was from around 600 feet to 2000+ feet and and the angle of ascent varied a lot. We started the ascent with a steep climb of 50-60 degrees for about half of the way, and rest of the ascent was a “trivial” matter of hardly 30-40 degrees. Around noon we reached a spot which we had marked as “Ascent Ends” in our route planning. This was at a height of about 1800 feet and the way to peak was now more or less straightforward – if you consider making your path through boulders and thorny bushes and skirting around drops (though not steep, but drops nevertheless) to the valley below and descending down the same valley for some distance to find a better way up as straightforward. When viewed in Google Earth I had felt that once the ascent ends, I would be able to trot to the peak – there were contours till the peak, but the height difference was generally just 100 feet. The path we took till peak just showed me how amateur I am, and how much can a satellite image be trusted. 100 feet from air is hugely different to the actual traversal of those 100 feet on the mountain.

As we were following this route to reach the peak we chanced upon a good clearing with ample shade and breeze. At this place Sridhar, Kosstubh, and Guhan went ahead to one of the lower peaks of the mountain (it has 4 separate peaks, actually view-points would be a better word as peak is the highest point; these 4 separate points are at a much higher elevation than the surrounding area) to reconnoiter the path to the actual peak, while I rested my bones – once again. They returned back with good news that the actual peak was close by, and they had even spied a way down the mountain. They had seen the saddle between two of the view-points/peaks of the mountain, and we had aimed to hit that and walk atop the mountain from there. We mistook some turn, and luckily for us we directly reached the peak that we had intended to walk to from the saddle.

On top of the Tadakalpudi Mountain Range Peak. This was on Day-1 afternoon

And at 1:40pm, we were atop the world! OK, I’ll stop exaggerating, we were atop the Tadikalpudi Mountain Range. Not a bad achievement at all. The cool breeze atop the mountain was refreshing, but much more refreshing than that was the knowledge that we had achieved what we had set out to do and that too in good time, thanks to the immaculate route planning that we had done. In all we had taken nearly 8 hours to reach the mountain-top.

Camp was set up, we kept three sides open as temperature was very high

The peak-conquest was followed by a photo-session, a breather in the sun on one of the rocks that formed the summit, a satisfying lunch, finding a good camping spot, pitching our tent, and simply resting. We sat watching the beautiful sunset, while Guhan kept getting “Sridhared” non-stop.

Waiting for the sunset, the whole mountain range was aglow with the fading light of the sun

Each of us had carried 6 liters of water and as the first day ended Guhan, Kosstubh and me were left with only 1ltr, 2ltr, and 1.5ltr of water respectively. It had been a very humid day, and we were sweating almost non-stop throughout. We managed to keep ourselves hydrated, and were relying totally on the stream that we would encounter on the way down. Amongst all this Sridhar was sitting cool with 4 liters of water with him. Where each of us had drank 4-5 liters of water, Sridhar easily managed with 2 liters only!

Day 2 : 30th August, 2009

Conquered the other adjoining peak too. This is on Day-2 early morning

An event-less night later, we were up before dawn, to summit the next peak, and catch the sunrise. The sun played peek-a-boo behind clouds, but we were able to reach the other peak quite easily. I felt it was even higher than the peak we had conquered on Day-1 afternoon. We were not carrying the GPS at the time to verify the authenticity of what we were feeling, but it was a common feeling among the four of us.

The descent has started, and we kept finding pockets of water along with boulders and greenery all around

We packed the tent, our belongings, and started the descent along the west face of the mountain at 6:30 am. The descent initially was very steep and within half an hour we had reached 1500 feet. We kept crossing pockets of stagnant water, and we were crisscrossing across the dry stream bed, in search of the manna of life – water. We kept finding water, but not flowing water. Just after 8 we reached a pool with ample flowing water. We refilled our bottles, washed away the accumulated dirt of the past 30 hours, Kosstubh even took a dip, we had a sumptuous breakfast, and were back on our way down the stream towards the village. Now that the stream had ample water, finding our path across the boulders that made the stream bed, and even bordered it was getting trickier. Getting back into the mountains was not an option as the stream was bordered on both sides by thick bushes full of thorns. We kept hopping from one boulder to another, and after what seemed like an eternity (in reality only two hours) we were at the base of the mountain, left the stream, and took a turn into the flat ground filled with shrubs at around 10:30 am.

This was the water source where we were finally able to quench our thirsts and refresh ourselves. A miniature waterfall had filled up quite a decent sized pond

As soon as we entered the flats, the green top surrounding the stream disappeared and with it the safety we had from the hot merciless sun. Within minutes we were wishing for shade, but shade was hard to come by now as the trees were scarce. We were amidst a maze of fields, and shrub covered grounds and there was no clear path across them to the village. Sridhar went ahead on one of the probable path to see if it was good, while the three of us greedily ate the Glucose. Water reserves were again running low, as we had filled just 1-2 liters extra for the descent (no sense in carrying extra weight) and that meant eating glucose directly without water. We would surely have achieved a Master’s Degree in Water Management had there been any such thing! Sridhar called us from across the field saying he had found the way back. We encountered a well laid dirt path that led us straight to the village. Soon, at about 11:30 am, after enduring the stares of each and every villager (we were as good as aliens to them – people descending from the mountains with backpacks, and strange rolls [sleeping mats] hanging from the bags), we finally reached the railway station.

A very very tiring trek, but a massively successful one too. One to be cherished for a long time

–

It helped a lot that we had distributed the responsibilities for the trek management earlier – Guhan handling the finances, Kosstubh and me planning the route, Kosstubh, Guhan and Sridhar handling the food, and Sridhar being the final authority on the path we planned, and everyone pitching in where required.

The total trek distance was nearly 15kms. 7.7 kms in the plains (village to mountain base and mountain base to village), and rest within the mountains.

Another point to note: if you are planning to ever do this trek, please do take appropriate guidance and permissions. The villagers are very suspicious about movements in the hills.

From afar the mountain looks deceptively easy to climb, from Google Earth it feels it is nothing, but one lesson I learned the hard way on this trek was – never ever judge a mountain on how it looks in maps and from afar. Till the time you set your foot on it, you do not know the mountain.

The Successful Trekkers