A Long Ride..

The thing I miss the most about being young is the ability to play with fluid belief systems of a semi-developed mind that has not become rigid with scars and opinions as yet. When you are young, you don't have too long a shadow of the past to stop you from believing , sometimes - even the absurd . Reality of youth often follows perceptions that one chooses to embrace and not necessarily what circumstances actually are.

I don't know why this is the first thought that comes to me as I assume my place on the dais to face the group of creative writing majors who have assembled to discuss ideas on storytelling . Frankly, the last thing I would have cared for on a lovely Friday evening like this on my graduation day was to sit inside a hall and listen to a middle aged (moron of a) part time writer dishing out a lecture . I would have rather hopped on my motorbike and disappeared into the hills with my girl. In fact, that's exactly what I would have had done on that day of my life , had it not been for some sudden turn of events in the two months preceding it . Events that led me into skipping my graduation ceremony altogether, putting my campus interview job on hold and move to Delhi for a month to sulk and bum around in JJ’s plush pad.

JJ , my filthy rich college dropout Surd buddy , born into money, and with a heart of gold. Eighteen years back, was it ? No – almost nineteen actually..

I adjust the collar mike and smile at the kids . My eyes stop at a girl in a green T-shirt seated in the front row . She has sincerity written all over her pretty oval face, eager to absorb my bull, hungry to make it big in the world of wannabe fiction writers . I wonder if she has a boyfriend yet. Or a boyfriend STILL .…

"Memory and fiction are close cousins who trespass into each other’s territories pretty often……………..", I begin.

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What set the property apart from its surroundings was that unlike the other in-your-face bungalows thrusting their prosperity on your face, this had a driveway and a lawn covering a major part of your vision from the gate. The actual house was at the back, telling me that the owners were either fiercely private people, or they did not like showing off their wealth like their neighbors.

She was in her early 50s, the kind of woman who would have carried exquisite beauty on herself till a few years back and who seemed to have suddenly given it up , something that had started showing up in terms of her recent weight gain and bags under her eyes. She measured me in one quick glance, making me a tad conscious about my unpolished shoes and my patchy pair of Levi’s . She looked at me for a moment, contemplating what to say and cleared her throat.

“Meera called. She said you are her son’s best friend & someone who is quite an expert on motorbikes and probably the right person to take a look at that”, She spoke in a soft voice, pointing towards a covered shed by the porch which contained one of the most breath-taking Yamahas ( FZR1000R EXUP) I had ever seen.

I wanted to inform her that I was also a mechanical engineer who was actually an aspiring writer, yet to land a publisher for himself, and whose lack of a ‘secured future’ had led him into being unceremoniously dumped by his steady girlfriend, who, at this point in time was likely to be cuddled under the sheets inside her honeymoon suite onboard a cruise liner somewhere near the Caribbean isles, making coy gestures at her unsuspecting geek husband who was blissfully unaware that his shy wife had been a live-in girlfriend of another guy for two years before he hijacked her with his red passport.

Of course, I did not tell her all that . Instead, I attempted a polite smile and said,

“ Yes Ma’am. I am living with them for a few weeks and when I heard Auntie tell JJ about the bike, I volunteered that I could take a look at it since I am sitting idle at home anyway . I have a long standing passion for superbikes, though I am yet to ride something as magnificent as this.. This model used to be the boss before the Blade. Smooth, sweet handling, plus a brawny engine with plenty of midrange, thanks to the EXUP exhaust valve. The early bike is restricted to 125bhp with easily cut out carb rubbers. The low, slim seat suits shorties, but it’s a long reach to the bars. EXUP valves need regular greasing, clutches fail sometimes and the resulting detritus suspended in the oil can cause engine damage. Valve service due every 25,000 miles but better done every 20,000 and it’s a long job (20 of them). USD forks and projector headlights from ’91, fox eye lights from ’94…..”

For a moment, she considered the information I was rattling , as if weighing a difficult decision. Then she smiled and said, “ Okay sure. Please go ahead. But be sure you handle it with care. That is the reason I did not want it to leave our premises and be handed over to the service center guys whom my late husband never trusted . How much time do you think you shall need to tune her up ?”.

“Let’s see Ma’am. Maybe three hours – four, at the most ? Would that be okay ?”, I said, checking my watch, rolling my sleeves and making a mental plan of the sequence of activities I needed to undertake.

“ Yes, that’s perfectly fine”, she said, stepping back from the sun into the shade of the porch. “ Can I get you something to drink ? A beer perhaps ?”.

“ No Ma’am, thanks.. Maybe later. But yeah, a bottle of ice water would be nice ”, I replied , accepting the ignition keys from her and walking into the enclosure.

Undoubtedly the Yamaha was a beauty. Over the next three hours, I drifted into an alternate existence, suspending all my life baggage into a corner as I opened her up. Dismantling a motorbike always gave me a near sexual pleasure . I systematically combed through her, ?finding her nerve endings, discovering her sweet spots and reaching her deepest recesses, making her give in to me till we were one.

During these hours, I was almost oblivious to the presence of the lady coming around occasionally to observe me , a glass permanently held between her fingers . Only towards the end of the procedure, as I started the re-assembly, did I notice that she was a bit inebriated - her feet a little wobbly, her eyes glazed but quite steady. I also noticed that she was sipping a colorless drink – probably a vodka or a gin. And it was just early afternoon then.

“There you go Ma’am. She is ready to roll ! ”, I declared, dusting the leather seat with a clean cloth and moving the ignition key, feeling the satisfying growl of the engine in my palms.

She smiled. “I see that you are a very meticulous young man. My husband would have loved to see you in action . Come on in and freshen up while I fetch you something to eat and drink”.

Fifteen minutes later, when I emerged from the guest bathroom , I was unable to locate her in the hall outside. But I could make out that she had set something to warm in the microwave oven near the dining hall. I also spied a well stacked bar outside the open kitchen that contained some of the rarest brands of liquor I had seen in my twenty two years of life. I decided to get back into the guest room and wait for her to reappear.

I think that it was the large shield visible in the adjoining room’s mantelpiece that made me walk in there to check it out.

““Dishaa Rai – Team , Delhi Rangers ; The Grand Himalayan Dirt Track” was engraved on it.

I looked around the room. It was a pretty standard bedroom belonging to a young girl, except for the absence of any overflowing splatter of pink. There was a large Sony Television, a VCR , a spotlessly clean shelf containing a huge collection of video and audio cassettes and also an antique gramophone with a stack of records by it. There was an elliptical cross trainer in a corner of the room. The curtains were of a bright shade of yellow, coordinated with the bedsheets , the upholstery and expensive wood furnishings. Hearing footsteps, I turned around, apologetic at having intruded into a private confine of the house without invitation.

She was carrying a tray laden with pita bread, hummus , kebabs and a bottle of vodka with two glasses . This time I accepted a drink. She poured one for herself too.

“Go ahead. Look around. It’s okay”, she said, putting me at ease. “ In fact, why don’t you check the closets ? And once you do, I want to ask you something..”, she smiled indulgently.

Not sure if she was playing a game or was simply drunk, but not wanting to be rude , I cautiously sauntered towards the wall- to- wall closets and opened one of the doors. It contained neatly arranged piles of clothes of a young woman, an assortment of western and Indian. The second cupboard had two racks of shoes and four glass drawers above them. The upper drawers were full of junk jewelry while the bottom two contained sportswear. The third and last door opened into a large collection of miniature motorbikes. Everything was neat and orderly, giving the impression that the closet was perhaps cleaned more frequently than it was used.

“What’s your impression of her ? I had read somewhere that one can say a lot about a woman from her wardrobe ”, she asked, taking a sip from her glass.

Though her behavior was beginning to puzzle me, but I think that the quick shot of vodka had made me a little reckless . I decided to play along.

“Well Ma’am - I think that she seems to be a very disciplined young lady. Around five feet four inches tall, going by the size of her clothes. I think she loves western-wear more than traditional clothes . Her favorite colors seem to be yellow, blue and grey. My guess is that she wears her hair short, like a boy…”, I paused, looking at her, checking her expression.

“Please go ahead. You are doing great..”, she encouraged me, taking a seat after refilling my glass. I took a large sip of the iced vodka, a bite of the delicious pita bread roll and continued. For some reason, my buried anger at having being dumped by a girl of a similar age started brewing in me as I tried to visualize her while describing this girl.

“Hmm, I think she has a boyfriend, maybe of the same age as her. But she is not in love with him. What she actually wants is to go and live abroad . But of course, the boyfriend is not aware of this. I think that she is a responsible young woman who cares deeply for her parents’ wishes and aspirations about her….”

“Do you think that she is selfish ? Or someone who is calculative and ungrateful ?”, She asked, taking another fill of vodka and passing me the bottle.

“Well – I don’t know if I should call it selfishness. She is just a modern girl who has her own dreams..”, I replied cautiously, not wanting to offend her and yet, unwilling to give up on my ire.

“ Would a boy like you have fallen in love with a girl like her ?”, she asked, a faraway look in her eyes.

“Oh sure, you can bet on it ! Boys like me are born idiots in matters of the heart. Please don’t take offense. I am just being honest..”, I quipped, averting her eyes that were fixed on me as she hung on to my words.

And so, for the next hour, we went talking of the girl who was not present in the room – Me, trying to dissect and analyze her while she went on listening to my now-drunk rant, a small smile pasted on her thin lips, a smile that did not reach her eyes anymore. After a while, I fell silent when I could not think of anything new to add to describe the girl . For a few heavy minutes, the silence hung around us like an ominous shadow .

Suddenly I realized that it was quite a while since I had been sitting and talking vodka-crap . It was nearly 4 PM. I requested to be excused.

Her eyes suddenly returned into alert mode from the daze she had slipped into.

“Why, yes of course !”, She said, reaching for a purse, insisting that she had to pay me for the work I did on the bike. I refused the money, saying that it was sheer pleasure playing with it , followed by the interesting conversation with her . I thanked her for the nice lunch, stepped into the porch, started JJ’s Enfield and drove out of the gates, an eye on the rear view mirror till she slowly disappeared behind the driveway.

Since I was still a little tipsy from all that vodka, I did not want to go back to JJ’s place as yet. Instead, I turned northwards and hit the old Karnal road. I don’t know how far I drove that evening – maybe a hundred kilometers, maybe a little more. I stopped at a HP filling station on the outskirts of an approaching town after a couple of hours of lazy riding.

There are certain moments that get etched in your subconscious for good without any particular dramatic prologue . Till date, I remember the exact color of the home-bound sun, the texture of the fiery sky and the slight September breeze that grazed my face as I sat reclined on JJ’s bike , my legs resting on the handlebar, watching the day slip out of sight and disappear somewhere into the lonely planet from where we have all come from and shall go back to, one day.

That evening, no matter, how hard I tried, I was unable to reconstruct my rage in my memory like I would normally do, in order to curse my life and assign blames on someone else. By some stroke of magic, with that sunset, my anger had dropped out of my active memory . After that day, it would come back into my consciousness every now and then , but never in totality. On some days it would show up in bits & pieces, or certain memories of long lost conversations . But somehow, I could never again conjure it as a complete emotion that had any lasting effect on my life. Somehow, a vast indifference had marched in and displaced all my youthful complaints.

I finished my smoke, walked into the nearby public telephone booth and made two calls. The first call was to JJ, asking him not to freak out about me , adding that I would be back by night. The next call was to my mother, informing her that I was coming home soon, and that I had decided to accept the job offer in the FMCG company after all . My dream of becoming a writer could be realized later if it was destined to be…..

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“ So, did you ever get to meet this mystery girl, Dishaa Rai, after that day ? ”, is the first question. It’s the girl in the green T-shirt.

“No, I did not”, I reply, truthfully . “But somehow, it did not matter. Many years later, she became my first story..”, I add , with a smile.

I also do not mention that the prop about the girl’s wardrobe was a spin off from one of Murakami’s stories.

I do not tell her the entire truth. But then, that’s how we writers are. As I told you in the beginning – our memories are the fuel that we burn, distorting and bending them at times to convert them into fiction. Because, in the final analysis, there is only one story. Sometimes we live a part of it as a fact. At other times, we imagine it in fiction. And a thin line separates both.

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(Did you like this story ? Do hit a ‘Like’ and leave a comment. This was the fifth of my fanboy spin-offs of Murakami on my personal blog in 2015 as part of a 7-part endeavor to pay tribute to the maestro).

If you like reading short stories, you may check out my new collection, ‘Once upon a someone’, available on Amazon in your country.