Pause, Rewind, Slow-Mo, Play!

Wednesday evening, battling a mid-week sickness, I was in a delusional state that it was a Friday. Every time it dawned upon me that it wasn’t a Friday, I had to make the painstaking journey back to reality. I was riding back home on my beloved cruise bike. Perfect conditions for a nice ride on a cool Bangalore evening. Traffic was thinning on the Outer Ring Road and I felt my bike surge ahead of most vehicles with ease. Speeding in the nimble nineties, taking for granted the smooth and all-familiar ORR, I was in for a surprise, a nasty one at that. In a flash, I saw a pot hole, had no means to avoid it, stood upon the foot pegs, let my bike run into it, and after what seemed like a punch in the face, recovered some how without any loss of balance and continued.

Pause, Rewind, Slow-Mo, Play!

So, I was on the Outer Ring Road, riding my bike, when one Tata Sumo moving ahead of me swerved left around something. I thought I saw a pot hole. What I also saw in my rear-view mirror, was a lorry on a roll, speeding with the same fervor as mine. So, the possibility of braking was ruled-out. I braced up for the situation, positioning myself into a least damageable posture, braking enough to reduce my speed and still keep myself from reaching the lorry’s wheels, and finally, as if taking a plunge in a pool, entered the pot hole, the impact strained my neck, my bike gave a shudder, I came out of it, retained my balance and had to move on as if nothing happened.

Pause, Rewind, Slow-Mo, Play!

Lorry, Sumo, pothole, everything was happening in a rush. In less than a second, I saw it, tried to avoid it, tried to minimize the impact, tried to avoid going under the lorry’s wheels, went into the pot hole, came out and cruised along. But, a few nasty effects revealed themselves later. looked like, my front wheel had the maximum impact. The rim became askew, a few spokes were bent, the drum got cracked, the fork got compressed by nearly 4 inches, the left side seal of the fork ruptured, some of the fork oil spilled over, the fork got bent too, handle alignment went haywire, the rear wheel was bent and my bike was not the same.

It was incapacitated. Its torture could be felt. Its wails could be heard. It was limping in the front and crying like it had never cried before. But it somehow retained its resilience, and did its duty to bring me home. It knew that its master would never inflict such torment on to it deliberately, that its wounds would make cuts in his heart (and of course, burn a hole in his pocket). And I, the loving master that I am, wiped off those remnants of anguish from it.

If only I had the chance to kick someone in the balls and land a second kick again right there, it’d be to the fellow who was responsible for making an unsuspecting pot hole on a beautifully laid, signal-free road such as the Outer Ring Road.