Desi Wild Hogs

Meand my big mouth! If I had only not allowed the beer in my veins to do thetalking I would not be creeping around the dark outskirts of this dhaba like ajuvenile playing at James Bond. If caught, however, the consequences would bemore serious than for the juvenile. Those six husky thugs inside drinking beerlooked quite capable of breaking every bone in my body and I did not dislike myskeleton so much that I wanted it disassembled. For a moment, I wanted to runback to the bike, that I had ridden here, and drive away with my tail firmlybetween my legs.“Yougot yourself a good bike there!” “Doyou think those oldies will create trouble?”“Thosepathetic excuses for bikers? They must be in the next state by now. And, nopolice station in this area will take their complaint against me. They all knowthat my dad is the MP here.”Uproariouslaughter wafted out of the dhaba.Somethingfizzed in my blood other than the beer – Fury! Life had taught me to swallow alot of insults without reacting but, somehow, this insult to my bikingabilities ripped through the Teflon skin that I had developed.Ina sudden flurry of motion I crawled over to the bikes parked outside the dhaba.There was Sudhir’s bike – the no-frills one – looking like a house-wife in aparade of models. That was the one I had to take away before any of thosetoughs in there came out.Threehours ago the four of us had stopped at this dhaba, full of aches and pains,and downed a few beers as accompaniment for a great dinner. The dhaba owner waswell into his drinking session with his five friends when we landed up but,nonetheless, whipped up a very good meal and we were feeling expansive. Sudhirwas feeling more expansive than most and was bemoaning the discomfort of hisbike’s seat and lauding the more ergonomic design of the other bikes we hadseen outside the dhaba.‘Arreuncle! If you dislike your bike so much why don’t we exchange bikes”, said thedhaba owner.Beforeany of us could even utter a protest Sudhir said eagerly, ‘Would you?” One beerhad normally been enough for him to fall all over the neck of the neareststranger and swear bosom friendship and, thanks to a aching back, he had downedthree. Had we told anything about bewaring Greeks bearing gifts, he probably wouldhave said, “But these are not Greeks, they are Jats” and laughed immoderately.Thissextet looked menacingly strong and, before any of us could find a way to tellSudhir not to go ahead with the deal without insulting them, Sudhir had goneahead and exchanged keys.The sextet were solicitously ushering us out to thebikes by the time Reddy found his voice and started saying, “But..how do weknow that your bike is good?”“Areyou doubting our honesty?” said one of them menacingly.“No..No..but…”stuttered Reddy.“Whatdo you lot of has-beens know of bikes anyway? Get lost. The deal is done.”Beforewe knew it we were riding off in a hurry. Within the first fifteen minutes itwas amply clear that the only good thing about Sudhir’s new acquisition was theseat! The kick-starter kicked back, the accelerator either refused to move orrotated like a fan and the brakes squealed more than they braked. After erraticprogress for a few kilometers with Sudhir’s bike either stalling like a mule orjumping ahead like a war-horse we came to a halt.“Youguys just ran!” I said angrily. “There is a law in this land. We could havethreatened them with the police! They would not have dared to beat us up!”“Whydon’t you go and get Sudhir’s bike back instead of making out here like SunnyDeol?” said Rajiv contemptuously.“Allright! I will”Itis quite easy to be brave and believe in the law of the land when you aresafely away and shooting off your mouth with friends. On the ride back,however, all my bravado leaked away. The only thing that kept me going was thefact that I would never hear the end of it from my friends if I went back. Howoften is a display of fear avoided only because of a greater fear?Thesight of the dark outskirts of the dhaba and six husky guys sitting inside thepartitioned kitchen gave me an alternative idea. Which was how I found myselfon all fours in the middle of six bikes, trying to steal back Sudhir’s bike.Butwait! If I just took the bike away and these guys found out soon they would beafter us in a jiffy. Try as I might I could not see the four of us coming offvictorious, or even alive, in a melee with these guys. The only thing to do wasto somehow incapacitate their bikes so that they could not follow us with anyspeed.Withmy heart in my mouth and my pulse hammering in my ears, I cut off the fuelpipes of the other five bikes. Even while near panic I could not help feelingguilty about vandalizing bikes. I may have not ridden bikes for nearly a decadebefore now but I still had the heart of a biker. I could contemplate injuringany of these guys with indifference. Damaging their bikes, however, seemed likeharming a child and only self-preservation could have egged me on to do it.Isilently pushed Sudhir’s bike out to the road and started it and rode off witha sense of accomplishment. The things that a man can feel proud of!!x x x x x x x x xWhenI first thought up the idea of a biking trip, the last thought that would havecrossed my mind was that I would some day be sneaking around and stealingbikes. I had quit my job in my late thirties because I always knew that the onething that I did not want to do with my time was work. A lucky investment inthe stock markets and a even more luckily timed exit had made it possible forme to live without working. (Yes! Some people do make money in the stockmarkets. Where else do you think that all the money that you lose goes?).Nowthat I had time on my hands the problem was what was I to do with it? Not evenan instruction manual to help me out. Getting into the habit of allowing myoffice to decide what I do with my time had nullified my own inventiveness andnow I was at loose ends - which is when I thought of the four bikes in mygarage and the three friends to whom the other three bikes belonged. Sudhir,Reddy and Rajiv were coming over tonight to celebrate my new-found freedom andI intended broaching the idea of a bike trip to them.“Whenshe married me, I was 21 and a BA(Economics). If I had stayed as I was I wouldhave spend a lifetime climbing to where I am now and she would have been happy.Now that I have done my PGDM from IIM-B, she wants me higher still. Seems likeshe wants me to keep climbing but there is no specific place where she wants meto arrive..just keep climbing and climbing and climbing…up the corporateladder!” moaned Reddy. His wife was a perfect example of the contrariness ofhuman nature. She cared for him deeply while busily chipping away at hisself-respect with every word she said. Add to the mix a daughter who had outgrownthe Papa-can-do-no-wrong stage and was firmly seated in thePapa-can-do-nothing-right stage, you can understand how he could give theimpression of an out-of-breath, perspiring climber of an endless staircasewhile lolling on my bed and sucking at a can of beer.Rajivgave a snort. Reddy reddened and turned on him. “What do you know about it? Youare MD of your own company. Bhabhi is a model and too busy with her career tobother you about yours!”OnlyI was privy to Rajiv’s issues. The others knew he was not totally happy but didnot really know why. Being a bachelor had made me a sort of father confessor tohim. His wife was a lovely and popular model and he lived in perpetual fear oflosing her. He loved her to distraction and, thanks to his fear of losing her,he was perpetually dancing to her tune. Of late, apparently, her tune hadbecome Do-this-or-I leave-you which was causing him no end of distress.“Guys!Stop complaining! I can’t even find a woman to love me and you guys keepcomplaining about the women in your lives!” Our eternal romantic Sudhir! He hadsold off his online business for a hefty sum and was now a consultant fore-businesses. Had the sum he realized been heftier, there would have been nodearth of women who found him romantic. He had enough to be attractive in thearranged marriage circles but he had this weird notion of marrying for love. Ifonly his exterior had been as romantic as his heart! As it was, his pudgy frameand non-descript face created only one impulse in women – to urgently getelsewhere! I am over-stating the case here. There are men who make weddingbells ring in the minds of women. Sudhir, however, made women feel likereaching for his wrist with the nearest rakhi available.Gettingthe minds of this lot off their respective woes was a chore so I did notattempt it. Instead, I pitched the bike tour as a panacea for their troubles. Iwaxed eloquent about how a break would give them a perspective on their issues.I talked glowingly of meeting women on the bike tour to Sudhir. I told Reddyhow the tour could possibly make him take a fresh view of his life and evenenthuse him into climbing the corporate ladder with gusto. I told Rajiv thatthe biker mystique would make him more attractive to his wife. All these marketingefforts were successful, as you well know and you also know the unexpectedresults that that success brought me.x x x x x x x x xJustas you think your problems are behind you, Fate creeps up on you and hits youwith a sandbag. I had finished basking in the praise of my friends aboutsuccessfully threatening the thugs into releasing Sudhir’s bike and we hadproceeded further down the road for another half an hour only to find that itpetered out into mud trails. In our hurry to exit the dhaba the first time wehad taken the cut-off from the road. A local there told us that the only way toreach the main road was back the way we came. Past that dhaba!Wespent the night in the open. Needless to say, I was tossing and turning allnight and it was not because of the cacophonous snoring of my friends. I hadnot had the courage to tell my friends about my thieving and vandalizing waysand I was stuck with my story. Reddy, Sudhir and Rajiv could not understand myapprehensions and were even talking airily of stopping at that dhaba forbreakfast before proceeding onwards. It was the thought of these idiotsdeciding to stop there and the consequences of doing so that filled my nightwith waking nightmares. Withgreat difficulty I persuaded them to not only skip breakfast at that dhaba butto put as much distance between them and us as possible. The three of themseemed to have suddenly developed indomitable courage and iron resolution andit took a lot of silver-tongued oratory to convince them of the dangers ofallowing that sextet a chance to change their minds.Whenin sight of the dhaba, I saw only one bike and heaved a sigh of relief. Do youknow what this bunch of juvenile idiots did while we passed the dhaba. Hootedand gave the finger to those guys, that is what! The sextet came rushing out inanger. One of them tossed a half-burnt cigarette away and bent to pick up astone. There was a whoosh and the dhaba went up in flames. The cigarette musthave fallen into the pool of fuel that had drained out of the bikes. I waspiling up a huge debt with these toughs and, if ever the payment fell due, Iwould be looking at the daisies from the roots up.Onwardswe proceeded for the next couple of hours till we reached a small town. Therewas a sort of motel at the outskirts and we were hungry enough to stop there for breakfast.Everbelieved in love at first sight? Neither did I, but one look at the girl at thereception and Sudhir was lost to the rest of us. The girl, of course, showed nomarked signs of Cupid’s attentions. She seemed happy to see that we were bikersbut there was no specific attraction for Sudhir visible. From the looks of thephotographs in the reception counter she seemed to be of the owner’s family –the owner’s daughter, as it turned out - and the bike that figured prominentlyin all the photographs explained her preference for bikers.
That was it! Nothing would do but to stop there for the day (and for the rest of his life the way Sudhir talked bout it!). Wesettled in the only room that was available in the motel. As the day wore on with no sign of that sextet there was asigh of relief for me. There were no visible signs of pursuit till we came hereand I could assume that the six toughs must have given up on any thoughts ofrevenge. Fate must have had a hearty laugh about then.Thenext day we woke up to signs of revelry in the motel. Yesterday’smatter-of-fact reception girl was all smiles when we went down and a shower ofcolor and squirts of water along with the shout ‘Holi Hai’ explained the reasonwhy. Being accustomed to city life, it was a novelty for your hotel owner andemployees to want to take liberties with you just because it was Holi but we couldnot bring ourselves to object in the face of such unalloyed enthusiasm andenjoyment.Breakfastwas had in a festive mood. Sudhir’s heart-throb – Jasmit Kaur- had joined us atthe table and Sudhir was giving her the full benefit of his ‘charm’ with a waryeye out for the sight of any rakhis in the neighbourhood. By the time wefinished with breakfast and stepped out to stretch our legs, I was as relaxedand joyous as it is given me to be when the familiar figure of that dhaba owner on that excuse for a bikehove to on the horizon. Disaster!!BeforeI could even conceive of any evasive action, he came rushing in at us and got afull squirt of colored water and a couple of handfuls of gulaal in his face.Sudhir had recognized him, of course, but the love sloshing around in him hadwashed away any vestiges of bad humor in him and, thus, he greeted that toughlike a long-lost brother is greeted on Holi. Jasmit thought we had met anotherfriend and joined the revelry with peals of laughter and more gulaal.Itis difficult to imagine the plight of that chap. He had thought to gain a goodbike and lost a decent dhaba overnight. On top of it, the very chaps who had‘cheated’ him of the bike and caused the loss of his dhaba were adding insultto injury by making a fool of him, with that girl laughing at him like he wassome sort of a comedian.“Justyou wait”, he screamed in fury as he ascended his bike. “See if I do not get myfriends along, trash this place and stamp you guys into the ground” With thathe roared off. Well! With that bike it was more roar than off but he was movingaway to bring disaster on all of us.ExplanationTime! I really do not want to recall the next half an hour or so. By the time Ihad done explaining what really happened on that night and why that sextet wasbound to come hopping mad at us, the other four had heaped enough abuse on meto last the next several lifetimes. Yes! Four! Now that Jasmit had been draggedinto our mess she was quite free with her abuses as well – and, if you really likehearing a virtuoso performance in abuse, you cannot beat Punjabi for it.Adistant roar of bikes heralded the arrival of disaster. As we learnt later, theother five bikes had been sent for repairs overnight. With the dhaba owner onour trail, the rest had hastened to get their bikes and started after us. What with his superb bike and checking for us at every dhaba en route, it had taken him till evening to reach the village before this town where he had stayed overnight. Whenwe were sighted and our nemesis informed them of our whereabouts they were justan hour away from where we were.“Come!Let us run!” I said in a frenzy of fear. Rajiv and Reddy turned towards theirbikes.“Noway! I am not letting Jasmit face trouble all by herself. You run if you wantto” said Sudhir. However hard I looked at him I could not see a hero in him butthe look in Jasmit’s eyes said, ‘My Hero!” as plainly as though he were a sixtyfoot cutout of  Sunny Deol! Sudhir seemedto have found love at last…but that ‘at last’ seemed more likely to be ‘at theend of his life’ in a few minutes.Wecould not abandon Sudhir. Reddy, Rajiv and I reluctantly turned from our bikesand faced the incoming army with resignation. Reddy’s phone rang.“Wherethe hell are you? Did I not ask you to call me every day? What are you doing?”said the shrill penetrating voice of Mrs. Reddy.“Committingsuicide!” said Reddy bitterly.“What?”Ihurriedly took the phone from her. “Bhabhi!” I started…”Shit! The phone isdead!”Minewas dead, too when I checked. There was no time to settle Mrs. Reddy’sapprehensions with the incoming sextet descending from their bikes andadvancing menacingly upon us.Iwould never have believed it of Sudhir. One moment he was standing next to meand the next he had streaked forward and planted a fist in the midriff of thefirst opponent. Rajiv’s phone rang.“Whatis this I hear about Reddy committing suicide?” It was a day for penetrating femininevoices.Sudhirhad just managed to bounce once off the ground and, with a streak of blood onhis forehead, he was back into the attack.“Later,dear! I am kind of busy now!” I advanced into a superbly executed uppercut anddid a graceful reverse somersault.“Busy?Talk to me now or I will leave you”Reddywas clinging like a limpet to one of them when another guy plucked himeffortlessly off and flung him into the trash can.“Getoff the phone or I will leave you..” a fist knocked off the phone, “for thenext world!”Afterthat the melee was a kaleidoscope of movement. Sudhir was getting dribbled likea basket-ball; Reddy was figuring centrally in a vigorous foot-ball match whileRajiv and I were alternatively featuring as the ball and ninepins – sometimes Iwas the ball that knocked Rajiv down, sometimes he was! In the midst of allthis vigorous athletic activity roared in a magnificent sardar astride amagnificent bike and a stentorian voice called out, ‘Stop this right now!”Suchwas the command in the voice that all activity ceased on the instant. Believeit or not, Sudhir and I froze midway through falling to the ground andcontinued the action only after a second!“KarnailSingh Sahib!” said the sextet in one over-awed voice! From the cacophony ofadulatory voice I gleaned that the Sardar was not only the father of Jasmit butalso the founder of the biking club to which our sextet of toughs belonged.KarnailSingh had also managed somehow to get the gist of all the happenings.“Boys!What is the first rule of our biking club?” he asked censoriously.Thesextet of toughs looked like shame-faced schoolboys and one muttered, “Allbikers are my brethren”.“Youare bikers only if you can take joy in biking and spread it around. Behavinglike hooligans only makes you a rowdy riding a bike and not a biker. I amashamed to think of you as belonging to my club!”“But…theydamaged our bikes.”“Yourbikes seem quite all right now! Come, shake hands and be friends!”Ifsomeone had ever told me that I would do something as corny as shaking handwith the guy who was using me for a punching bag, I would have called him afool to end all fools. But here I was, holding my hand out sheepishly andwincing with the strength of the grip of the other guy!Believeme or not, in the three days that it took for Mrs. Reddy and Mrs. Rajiv to landup here we were thick friends with the sextet. The dhaba owner had hisreservations, of course, since his was the major loss but the others were quitedecent lads.Mrs.Reddy came all tears and contrition. “I never thought you would do this. I knewyou were hurting but I couldn’t help myself. I won’t talk down to you again. You,too, promise me that you will never contemplate suicide again!”“ButI never..” started Reddy and gulped down the rest of his words in the face ofthe 10000 KW glare from the rest of us! Here was his chance at a peaceful homelife and he was well on his way to fluffing it by saying that he nevercontemplated suicide.Mrs.Rajivhad her own litany. ‘At last! For once you treated me as a person. Up to now itseemed to me that I was an object of desire, which should not be lost at anycost. When you said you would leave me…that was the first time you ever saidanything that meant that you considered me as a person to be liked or disliked”‘But,darling! You don’t understand exactly how..”Another10000 KW glare! Electricity was certainly in the air that day. Iknow it seemstraitorous to my sex but men can really be such fools!“Youlove me, darling?”, said Rajiv, recovering from his folly.“Ofcourse, you idiot! Why do you think I stayed with you…for lack of choice?”Therewas an interregnum of inchoate noises that need no explanation.“Rajiv!There are other ways than anger to show that you consider me as a person”. Therewas a hint of steel in her voice. “I am not exchanging the position of trophywife for that of a door-mat”.Lookedlike it was not going to be entirely a bed of roses for Rajiv!Thebiker crowd was happily planning Sudhir and Jasmit’s wedding. It seemed to methat Karnail Singh was not entirely happy with the idea – going by thedisbelieving look in his face every time he looked at Sudhir – but Jasmitproved to have a will of steel, especially when it came to her father.Oneunhappy voice intruded in all this festivity. “What will I do? My dhaba is goneand I have nothing to live on.”Thatis when I had my brightest idea. Here I was, wondering about what to do with mytime and here was this guy situated off a main road and a grand cook too.Sitting on the road, watching traffic, meeting the odd customer, going on bikerides and visiting the city every now and then seemed like a very attractiveproposition.“Listen!I will go partners with you. I will finance a small motel at your location!” Isaid. My erstwhile nemesis was so grateful to me that he almost drowned me inhis tears of joy.Havingarranged happy endings for every one I leant back satisfied. The only fly inthe ointment for me was that, when I proposed living so far from Delhi,there was a noise suspiciously like a sigh of relief from three sets offeminine nostrils! Women! I will never understand them!Disclaimer: A fellow-blogger challenged me to write a desi version of the movie 'Wild Hogs' for the Castrol contest. I hope there are enough similarities in story-line to satisfy him, enough differences and enough biking to satisfy the contest requirement of an original biking story!