Rain Ride

One of my friends Putt had a bike accident yesterday. He and his room-mate Moda, were coming towards the college when a KSRTC bus clashed with their Bullet. The bus conductor was of the opinion that the bike was overtaking an auto rickshaw and the bus had somehow swerved to avoid a rock or a gutter…

Putt was messed up pretty bad. He needed two operations yesterday. He had to be shifted to a super specialty hospital for the second one. I believe that the best treatment possible was provided to the duo. He has to be ok in some time, once the bones heal. Moda had a fractured thigh bone. He too is ok now.

Putt is a careful rider. He doesn’t take any chances on the road, from what I’ve seen of his riding. Given the chances that I take everyday, it is statistically predictable that I too might meet with a similar shunt one day. I was riding really slowly and careful all day today. To tell the truth, I was scared.

The weather here in Trivandrum is really hot nowadays. The summer is yet to peak and the mercury keeps on rising everyday. There was a summer shower today, as I was leaving college today. I got totally drenched.

My glasses were all steamy and wet, and could hardly see what was in front of me. Still I went on at a slow pace. I looked like a Neanderthal then, I suppose. I had a grimace on my face and my eyes were almost closed – a compromise between shutting out the stinging bullets of water and maintaining necessary vision.

I don’t usually fancy rains. Maybe it is that, I’ve had too many bad experiences to relate with rains. People usually like rains. Sometimes, just to look at the heavens opening their lachrymal glands, and wonder at this world that we live in. My grimace was increasing at a steady pace as the odometer counted on. My mind was also in a tunnel vision. It had the stinging rain and the traffic to cope with. All I saw was the yellow rear end of the lorry which was chugging in front of me. I was trailing it, trying to avoid direct blast of rain.

Here I was, wet to the core, rain stinging my skin, and very irritated. Suddenly, a scene from The Zahir rose up in my mind. A scene where the author undergoes a ritual initiation act; one in which he has to shed off his clothes and brave the cold wind of the Steppes. The author shivers, as the cold wind lashes his bare skin. Mikhail, his companion tells him to stop resisting the cold. Accept it. Stop fighting it…Suddenly the cold lost its overpowering sway, says the author. I decided to try that.

I accepted the bite of the rain drops. The world in front of me changed to a beautiful place. It was almost a continued sequence of moments of clarity as I kept riding in the rain. I had started enjoying it. There was a wide grin pasted on my face as it got whipped by the rain drops coming at different angles as I followed the wet road and its twists and turns. The wind was like a symphony conductor, guiding the rain drops’ trajectories to perfection, or imperfection. Nothing’s perfect they say. But, sometimes we feel that nothing’s imperfect. Crafted to perfection, even though it might appear as not. That ride was something to remember, even though I still don’t like rains.