Never mind the fact that I had the same reaction when someone mentioned ‘Gajagamini‘ as well.

The female elephant theory (that I came up with in a state of total sobriety) seemed validated when Aamir Khan beefed up by drinking a truck full of milk and ate some twenty raw chicken each day in an effort to build up more muscles than Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Hritik Roshan put together. By golly, did he succeed or what?

In any case, on saturday morning, I went on a long bicycle ride with a friend of mine and he and I rode about 80km that day. I hadn’t been on my bicycle for almost 21 days, thanks to having fallen ill and not having been in town, and I was surprised at myself for having done so much distance without any problems.

It was only when I got home and sat down for about thirty minutes and then tried moving did I figure out that I’d pulled some muscle in my leg, and was finally graduating to using crepe bandage for an aching muscle for the first ever time in my life. Sweet.

Somehow, the only way to remedy this painful situation was to counter it with something that was more painful, and this was when I decided to go watch Ghajini at the Inox in Swagath Garuda Mall in Jayanagar. God bless south Bangalore!

Ghajini met all expectations so far as painful fundas were concerned. True, the production values for the movie, the sync-sound and the background score were all at par, but the film was ‘Meh‘ at best for me.

It started off with a Prof. explaining to his ‘final year medical students’ as to how ‘The brain is the most vital organ of the human body‘. It was the first cue for me to get up and go, but having paid INR 180 and being the supercheap guy that I am, I decided that I had to endure the entire movie to get my money’s worth, or die trying.

Asin was super-cute in the movie, though I am of the school of thought that subscribes to how women should wear very little / no make-up, and had Asin done so, I am sure she’d have looked a lot prettier and would’ve had more people drooling in the aisles.

Aamir Khan showed more skin in the movie than Asin did, and there was one song in the movie which had six Aamir Khans dancing around in outfits that wouldn’t have been out of place in a gay-pride parade.

Should Aloo Aravind and Murgadoss want to promote the whole concept of male objectification as propagated by Aishwarya on her blog, and also take a few reels out of Dostana and pull gay audiences to the movie, then this ploy of having Aamir Khan wear SKimpy clothes is probably apt.

The other aspect about Ghaijini (apart from it being incredibly asinine at times) that I didn’t like was the violence in the movie.

Not that I am not a fan of violence. I’ve enjoyed every minute of movies like ‘Eastern Promises’ and ‘A History of Violence’ and Edward Norton’s scene in ‘American History X’ where he makes the car-jacker put his mouth on the pavement and kicks it in is one of my favourite cinematic moments.

But the violence in Ghajini, especially against the women, sends out all the wrong signals to our society which already has enough crazed elements without movies like these having to fuel their insanity further. One can see men fight each other all the way, but the golf-like stance with which Asin’s character was done away with was just a tad too gruesome to watch, especially with the extended, sadistic build up to it happening.

True, all those who I had arguments with about this particular scene said it was after all, just a movie. I agree. But giving it a U/A certificate and watching it with children isn’t such a good idea.

In retrospect, I’d rather have watched ‘The President is Coming‘, but then again, I had to do something about my hurting leg, apart from singing Bon Jovi’s ‘Gimme something for the pain’ from their 1995 album, ‘These Days’!

I’ve worked for a month or so towards ensuring that our office also becomes bicycle friendly – which means that they’d have to provide metal retainers to which one could lock one’s bike to, rather than just park it in the stand with two wheelers and risk someone lifting it off and carrying it away. My bike is so light despite being a mountain hardtail, and I am naturally paranoid about its security, and hence the retainers would go a long way in assuaging my fears.

Additionaly, I’d also requested for provisions to ensure that we’d have showers at the office, just so as not to raise a stink. Personally, this shower funda was raised keeping other people’s sensibilities in mind. I am totally comfortable with my odour (thanks to a phenomenon named olfactory adaptation, as learnt in class 11), and so far, I’ve not heard complaints. But then again, we’d not want cyclists at my office to get a bad name due to BO, and hence the necessary precaution.

Measures are being put into place as we speak in our parking lot, and I am eagerly waiting for the day which will bring about the unveiling of said facilities. However, I honestly got tired of waiting and decided to ride my bike to work. That was the only important place that I’d not taken it to.

Hence, on friday morning, I set out along the 11 km route, and as I reached the office, I suddenly realized that I had carried all my locks to tie up the bike, but I had forgotten the keys back at home. I had two options, one of which was to stash it in a friend’s car. Her Ford Ikon was not able to fit my bike, despite me having dismantled the front and rear wheel and the handle.

Consequently, I had to cycle back home, pick up the keys and cycle back to the office. By the end of the day, when I got home after a long day at work, which, incidentally was the last day at our office for my favourite manager (and the person who took my interview to recruit me in college), I had clocked approx 50 km, and I was raring to go for more.

I think I’m now an endorphin addict, for sure.

In other news: I always wear a helmet when riding my bike, even for short ranges. It is a combination of being paranoid about one’s safety, combined with the fact that the helmet makes me look cooler and gives the impression of me being a serious cyclist, as I mentioned before. I think it would be a 70-30 weightage break-up between the two factors.

In any case, some random guy asked me, ‘Why do you wear a helmet for riding a bicycle?‘ and my reply, which in retrospect was deeper than I had originally intended for it to be was, ‘Because I have a head‘.

I’m awesome.

Thika, in Kannada, refers to one’s gluteal region, a.k.a Kundi as do other more detailed graphic words that I’m not going to mention simply because I am not too keen on spoon-feeding you, and thereby fostering your spirit of enquiry regarding matters that relate to what my English teacher in school used to refer to cutely as bowel language.

Thikanov refers to pain in the kundi, which is what I’ve had after a weekend of cycling all over the city. I must’ve done about sixty km on my trusty new machine, and the whole experience was just so brilliant that I know for sure that I am either going to maintain my cycling sprees or up the ante further as and when time permits.

I am certain that with a few more weeks of riding the cycle, I am going to feel zero pain, but in a weirdly fraud-masochistic way, the aching muscles are weirdly satisfying.

In addition to cycling, I also had to, on one occasion carry the bike up four flights of stairs to the house of PeeGeeKay, where I’d crashed on saturday night post dinner at Shiok with Skimpy (who now says ‘GuDgaon’ for Gurgaon and has effectively crossed the rubicon), Baada and PeeGeeKay, who’s been singing bittersweet symphony about once every five minutes, and rightfully so.

It has been my third visit to Shiok this month, and each time, I leave with happy in my belly and happy on my countenance. I usually end up eating so much that I can afford to miss out on my midnight snack thereafter and not risk dying of hunger.

In my first weekend of hardcore cycling, I learnt a few things:

• Wear a helmet if you have one. Its ok if you think you look dorky or if junta make fun of your wearing a helmet on your cycle. It is your head on the line and not theirs. Additionally, motorists give you more respect if you look like a serious cyclist.
• Avoid main roads, not because you have to, but because you can. I discovered some astounding roads in Jayanagar 1st block near the Ashoka Pillar statue when I took a random detour to get towards Bannerghatta road. Most of them ended up being cul-de-sacs, but as Skimpy later informed me, that area is considered the coldest part of Bangalore. Cycling around will sure help me discover new places and make me like the city even more than I already do. (Far cry from how I felt more than four years ago when I first landed here from Mysore.)
• Stand your ground. More often than not, cars and two wheelers behind you tend to treat you with disdain, contempt or possibly with a significant amount of disrespect. So long as you are aware that they are as worried about hitting someone as you are worried about getting hit, you’re fine and you know that they’d not collide with you intentionally. However, this rule doesn’t apply to taxis, trucks, lorries, rented transport vehicles of any kind and it is necessary to give these characters a wide berth, to propagate your genetic material further.

What was nice was that I was able to find a place where I could tether my bike to at Crossword, Indiranagar and also in a couple of other places where I had to stop. Once I discover more bike-parking friendly places closer to areas that I frequent, I would feel sanguine about taking my bike there and using it more and more.

Full respect to Rohan and Nikhil from Bums On the Saddle for having helped me get my bike!

However, one of the strips that I distinctly remember reading was one where Archie was broke, and had to fill gas into his jalopy, and went to a station and asked for 50 cents worth of gas. The attendant laughed at him and said, “wait! Let me fetch my eye-dropper!”.

Last night, at 11-20 PM, I faced a similar situation. Some people who know me decently know of my inherent laziness to visit an ATM to withdraw money. In fact, whenever I can, I weasel out of situations where I have to pay by using my debit card / meal card or worst case credit card, especially if the end of the month is at hand.

On some other occasions, I transfer funds online immediately to other friends after asking them to pay, and people such as Monkee and SKimpy have been at the receiving end of online transfers, for it is convenient, atleast for me.

Last night, having left the office late, I suddenly realized that I had almost run out of petrol. I somehow managed to get the bike towards an Indian Oil station that was open late on Mysore Road, and on instinct, asked if I could pay by card. Much to my dismay, they didn’t accept plastic money, and I was then forced to pay cash. To compound my misery, I discovered that I had only INR 12.50 in my wallet.

It was in these dire straits that I had to politely ask the attendant at the station to fill petrol for 12.50 into the bike, for I knew that the quantity was enough for me to make it home comfortably, and then some.

However, the look he gave me when I told him about exactly how much petrol I wanted filled in was priceless.

In the interest of playing pranks, I would suggest that you all take your cars / bikes and ask for small amounts of petrol to be filled into your vehicle, and observe the reactions that are presented to you. What would be funnier was if you offered to pay for that money using a card.

My friend’s bike, which I am in possession of when he is in the US, has been extremely useful for me in order to undertake this long and perilious journey across this huge distance. Normally, thirty six kilometres isn’t really a big deal. But when all of it involves riding through Bangalore city, and through peak traffic on a weekday evening, you would be pardoned if you thought I was being masochistic. This, especially considering the ride is from the south west end of Bangalore till its north east end.

Riding at the speed I do (I rarely speed beyond 60, stick to the rules at all times, refrain from honking and never ever ever ever ride on the pavement), it takes me a considerable amount of time to cover that distance. Although, in my defence, even if I were to actually ride much faster, the net time spent on the road would still be the same.

I was initially contemplating going via Residency Road, getting onto Airport Road at Domlur and then heading straight along it till I could take a left and turn off towards the road that leads to CV Raman Nagar and DRDO, but with some genius having dug up parts of Residency Road, and Namma Metro rendering MG Road unusable for the next decade, only fools would rush in, where circumspect motorists fear to tread.

Nevertheless, I’ve devised a divide and conquer approach to ensure that I am able to complete that long and painful journey and still be fresh like a Lipton Taaza chaai ad model by the end of it all. This has ensured that I’ve divided the route into four logical sectors, each of thirty minutes duration.

Sector 1 – Global Village to Deve Gowda Petrol Bunk: usually tackled through the back route via Uttarahalli, and is mostly peaceful if navigated upon at the right time, with a small jam that invariably happens at the petrol bunk intersection due to work going on at the Kadirenahalli junction underpass, and the resulting traffic diversion thereafter.

Sector 2 – Deve Gowda Petrol Bunk to Hosur Road Forum Signal: This sector requires a bit of luck, some knowledge of the inside roads, and the willingness to go through Tilak Nagar in Jayanagar, which comprises of some of the craziest auto drivers ever known to mankind. The kinds that would swerve sideways when going along the road, just like F1 cars would in a warm-up lap just before the race starts. With some reasonable manoeuvering especially on after the Dairy Circle flyover, this entire section can also be covered optimistically in 30 minutes.

Sector 3 – Hosur Road Forum Signal to Indiranagar – Domlur flyover: Ideally, this section should be the fastest, but is also the one populated with most HTs, and as a result, even the most careful of motorists should, in a bid to save their lives and have as few near death experiences as possible, ride as if they’re in a battlefield. The good people of Koramangala seem not to care too much about major road intersections, and are virtually colour blind to traffic lights. Once you fear the worst is over, there’s the Inner Ring Road connecting Koramangala to Indiranagar.

This road, which is sheer joy to ride on before 7 AM and after 10 PM is just about unbearable at other times, particularly due to the lack of speed breakers, and also because anyone who has to go towards Indiranagar from EGL necessarily has to cut through the gap in the divider and take a U turn, causing a reasonably pathetic pile up.

However, due to the presence of Radio Indigo, and with the request hour on the evening show hosted by Rohit Barker, where sometimes, one is so lucky so as to get one’s request played, this horrible sector can be successfully navigated peacefully.

Sector 4 – Indiranagar Flyover to Drummer’s House: This is the last sector, and the closer one approaches the final destination, the greater the hunger pangs one feels. The feeling of hunger peaks near the BEML intersection at the end of New Thippasandra, and for another three kilometres thereafter, the ride is sheer torture. Until recently, this had some of the worst roads, and would make one’s teeth clatter in a manner that to me was fondly reminiscent of the noise the skeleton in our biology lab in school used to make since he had a defective spring connecting his skull to his jawbone.

Given I plan to undertake similar journeys via cycle on the weekends, albeit from my house in Banashankari 3rd stage, the whole comparision of both journeys should be quite interesting, in the very least.

Dorky has had a new means of transport, a bike, that his Ameyzing friend couldn’t fit into the cargo baggage on his study-cum-recreation-by-watching-every-possible-artist-perform-live two year stint in some place named Buffalo (where, the most abundant type of four-legged creature, incidentally, are people who are bent over, doggy-style), and hence had to leave it at the airport for Dorky to take back home, after it almost made the conveyor belt break under its weight.

Last heard, he was upgraded from economy, and flew business class for some inexplicable reason. Dorky likes to believe it was good Karma.

Anyway, the bike needed a little servicing, and once it was taken care of at the service center, Dorky set about traveling all across the city on it, although never for arbit reasons as he might once have. After a thorough wash, and some cleaning, and a few new things to spruce it up, the bike was back in the condition that it was supposed to have been in.

The people that inhabit the city that Dorky lives in know for a fact that most of the time spent on the road is invariably spent at traffic signals. Traffic signals and the inevitable delays associated with waiting at them have now become a way of life, such that most highly ingenious people have resorted to utilizing this time for more fruitful purposes.

Portable potties on the side of the road help people take a dump, while washbasins are kept in place for people to brush their teeths (sic). If the wait time at traffic signals goes up further, portable showerheads and shower curtains will also not be too far off for the bustling signal-sidewalk trade.

Some people end up buying their vegetables in the evening while on their ride back home, while students, specially those majoring in electronics and communication at VTU, have, according to unconfirmed and somewhat authentic reports, managed to study the entire syllabus for some subjects while on their way to the exam in college.

Love stories now happen at traffic signals, as lovers of opposite sexes and sometimes, non-opposite sexes (21st Century India is coming out of the closet) , faces hidden in their helmets or behind tinted glasses of neighbouring cars engage in an intimate and intricate courtship ritual that is the stuff that the next Bollywood fop film will derive inspiration from.

Dorky himself was witness to a plethora of such phenomena, and was slowly inured to it, with the passage of time. However, something happened the other day, that brought about an interesting twist to the whole commuting phenomenon.

Dorky was traveling on the bike towards a secret unspecified destination, that he himself had no idea about, while listening to some Arch Enemy (a band he’d recently started listening to) on his ipod. The helmet that his friend had purchased was one size too big, which was perfect for Dorky, as he could listen to music while on the move, albeit at a low volume so as not to prevent him from hearing the traffic. The intense decibel level didn’t really warrant a volume reduction, just for the record.

Dorky was trying to headbang with a big helmet on his head, and looked strikingly like a spaceman with epileptic seizure trying to ride a bike, but since he was unaware of how he looked, ignorance being bliss, he continued his appreciation for the music, unabated. He spotted a traffic signal ahead, well, he actually spotted a whole bunch of vehicles ahead of him on the road, and guessed correctly that a traffic signal lay about 200 metres further ahead, which toughly translated to ten minutes of wait time for him.

He slipped the bike into neutral, switched off the engine and folding his arms, kept listening to music, while intently staring ahead, his mind blank for everything except the music playing in his ears.

His musical appreciation reverie was suddenly disturbed by a loud screech of the kind that you can see right below.

Yup, that kind. Noisy and irritating.

He turned around and saw a dude, in a black leather jacket, on his super bike, matching Dorky’s (hopefully)menacing stare, eyeballs to eyeballs, through the visors of their respective helmets.

Dorky noticed that the dude, who we shall call Mike (simply because it rhymes with bike), had skidded and come to a halt dangerously close to his bike, and gave him a look, that motorists all over the world know and acknowledge as the “don’t fuck with the silencer of my Gaadi by coming too close” look, to which Mike took extreme umbrage.

The high noise levels of the vehicles surrounding them on a busy road then prompted the two of them to engage in conversation through a mode that transcended beyond the usage of mere words for communication. They just needed the language of glares, stares and hand gestures to put their respective points across.

However, since words need to be employed in this blog post to put forth the actual gist of the exchange, it nevertheless warrants a translation of the various messages traded across amongst Dorky and Mike, which are as follows:

Dorky – Don’t stand, don’t stand so close to me.
(which sounds so much like a Police song)
Mike – I’ll stand wherever I want to, balls to you, you skinny runt!
Dorky – Oh yeah? Wait and see, I will beat you to pulp.
Mike – Watch me beat YOU to pulp.
(It is then that Dorky proceeds to take out his Rubik’s cube and solves it within 15 seconds. What Mike is unaware of is that Dorky had solved it earlier and had just rearranged it into another pattern by twisting each surface by two turns, to make it into an alternating criss-cross-cube-colour-combo.)
Dorky – Let’s see YOU do that, spazzo!
(Mike then proceeds to call up his girlfriend, and gives her a telephonic orgasm in 10 seconds. Dorky has no way of knowing whether it was faked or stage-managed)
This whole battle continued as the people about them went around taking showers, taking a dump, solving Sudoku puzzles and cryptic crosswords, engaging in courtship rituals and the like, and ‘both these two’ guys hadn’t bothered with their morning ablutions still, because of this particular clash.

They finally decided to settle it like grown men usually do, by having a bike race, with the one who won being the champion (of what exactly, nobody knows till date, and nobody cares either. It is plain human tendency to try and prove you’re better than others, even in inane contests like being stupid, for instance).

The traffic signal countdown showed 60 seconds till the green light. Dorky put the side stand of his bike, got down, went on the side walk and did ten sit-ups (all with his helmet on, the ipod still playing away songs in his ears). After stretching his arms, when there were 25 seconds more, he mounted the bike. (He mounted the bike – heheheheheheheh – don’t think of what you’re thinking of!)

Mike, on the other hand, lifted his bike, and did a couple of bench presses on the road, with the bike above him. Onlookers, Dorky included, were astounded by his display of strength, but Dorky knew, because he had read the Panchatantra when he was a kid, a few months ago, that ‘mighty brawn is no match for nimble brain‘, but Dorky failed to notice that he had neither quality in abundant quantities while Mike had atleast one of the afore-mentioned ones.

With 25 seconds to go, both men were on their bikes – the signal counting down the last few remaining seconds of the life of at least one of the two people involved in the race, for it was going to be a fight to the death, gladiator-style, so help them God.

The sweat on Dorky’s brow began to cloud his vision, as it formed huge droplets that fell on the lenses of his spectacles, and he had to remove his hanky and wipe it clean, so he could see ahead clearly. Mike, on the other hand, was surprisingly cool about the whole thing, as he started his bike and revved his engine loudly, in an unnecessary show of strength, increasing the carbon emission content in the atmosphere when it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

Dorky started the engine of his bike too, and with a high idling time for the engine, did not resort to making the kind of revving noises that Mike did, as the countdown entered single digits.

6…5…4…3…2…1

Dorky didn’t know about Mike, but his heart was traveling up his oesophagus, all the way till his vocal chords, and was thumping away like a bongo drum in the hands of a drunk chimp with drum-sticks.

Both the bikes were into first gear, as the riders were valiantly trying to look ahead and see if the traffic train, which was thirty metres to the signal, was clearing fast. Dodging their way through the other motorists’ path, receiving not-unjustified curses from the other people waiting to cross the signal, the twosome zig-zagged through, and surged ahead.

Dorky, in a cool and calculated move, just went past Mike onto his right, forcing Mike to the left, and then moved left again, so that Mike didn’t have space and was forced to move further to the left yet again – resulting in him coming dangerously close to the footpath.

It was then that Mike realized that Dorky had tricked and out-manoeuvred him, and that defeat was imminent, for just ten metres ahead, lay a traffic cop checking post, and Mike was stopped by the cops. Dorky had read Mike’s license plate and knew that he was an outstation donkey who’d probably not paid his road-tax, and thus, he chose to make this move to force him onto the left side.

Dorky stopped the bike, parked it on the side stand and watched as Mike was forced to pay up a hefty fine for his offence. Without any further ado, he flashed a thumbs-up at Mike, gave him a big trademark grin, and got on the bike. This time, he almost stumbled and fell as he was about to start if again, but he managed to retain his balance and rode off to his unspecified-destination, with the melodious strains of We Are The Champions by Queen ringing away in his ears.

It should’ve been an evening adventure, he could have ridden away into the sunset.

Ah well.

Navigating through the smelly muck on first gear and setting foot into it, after dirtying my sneakers and with a complete and utter preoccupation of the state of my footwear and how I would have to clean it up, along with cleaning up the bike, I entered the gates of our campus.

At the gate, there was a guy, a techie in one of the other companies located within the campus who asked me for a ride. Given the fact that our campus isn’t too small, and that there was a distinct possibility that he was asking for a ride because he was late for a meeting, I ‘kindly’ obliged and stopped the bike.

Our man sat on the bike and promptly put his arms on the side, in a manner that seemed like he was holding my waist. The only solace I had, the music playing away in my helmet (songs from Iron Maiden’s Brave New World), also seemed to disappear suddenly as I found myself saying (and I never imagined I would actually be saying something that sounded like this) – “Bro, hands off, keep them to yourself!” or omething to that effect, and I am only able to paraphrase because of the fact that I was too agitated and I can’t really remember what I said.

He was obviously (as a certain Aswath Venkataraman mentions) a HT, and by the looks of it, with strong homosexual leanings. He didn’t seem to understand, and I had to tell him to take his hands off by actually brushing them off like dirt.

I have nothing against gay people, so long as they choose to hold nothing against me, specially their hands against my waist. That chooth motherfucker (pardon the profanity, I personally think its the first time I’ve ever cursed majorly in a year) is going to get it next time. Did I mention it was the worst day of my life?

Let me inform you from invaluable experience, that such a thing is not a good idea, for an overnight sea change in attitude or in working methodologies is, on the very least, a disastrous move.

I woke up early at about 7 AM on thursday morning, and after having a bath and having a light breakfast, went to the office by bike. It had rained cats and dogs the previous night, and I was unfortunate enough to have been caught in the downpour on returning home late (again, something never to be tried, in everyone’s best interests including that of your employer’s, considering one wouldn’t write acerbic posts of this nature and berate them). Now, the bad roads, lousy traffic and the rains together brought about a deadly combo, which I was not able to offset, even with some good music playing within my helmet (a motorcycle stereo – some funda whose explanations warrant another detailed post).

After getting my clothes a bit wet and dirty, and being a bit unsettled due to pathetic traffic moving at a snail’s pace due to blockages on the road caused as a result of seepage of sewage, I finally managed to take a left turn off Mysore Road towards my office, where another hurdle awaited.

The rains had caused the bridge connecting the location to my office with civilization to be flooded with the sewage river (Vrushabhavati, for those that know) and this river overflow had caused a lot of mud to be deposited, a six inch thick layer, through which motorists had to wade, so as to get to the office.

A scary prospect, but one which had to be tackled nevertheless to reach office, and due to other people on bikes who were ahead, and were forced to stop, so did I, and the resulting mayhem caused my lovely sneakers to get all caked in dirt.

My day had barely started and it was turning out to be one of the worst day of my life, and all just because I chose to wake up early and get to the office on time. The rest of the day was ok, forgettable, in fact, mercifully and I shall shudder whenever the thought of actually trying to turn over a new leaf henceforth crosses my mind.

It was helpful when I had to return late at 1 AM and move on to a friend’s place in the wee hours of Monday morning, after the Freedom Jam, where I got to MC on one of the stages. Heh

This post is about the bike ride I had when I went out on the peripheral ring road, which is outside the outer-ring road, and connects Mysore Road with Hour Road somewhere near electronics city directly, bypassing the now densely crowded and unbearable outer ring road.

My friends, Anju and Zabil purchased a flat out on Bannerghatta Road, and had invited some of us for a house-warming gathering of sorts, and it proved to be the ample excuse for me to take the bike out on some previously unexplored territory.

Soon after taking a left turn off Mysore Road, just beyond Kengeri, one is able to see the toll gate that indicates the beginning of the road that I am going to rave about in the next few paragraphs.

With the music of ‘The Who’ playing in my ears, my head comfortably ensconced within the large helmet, I set out on the road at a not so high speed of about 60 to 70 kmph, which seemed like a crawl compared to what most people were doing on the highway.

The wide expanse of the open road, the beautiful scenery with the grey clouds looming large, the prospect of rain at any minute, the slight glint of the setting sun peering through the clouds on the western sky, just about to go brighten up someone else’s day half the world away, ‘Pure and Easy’ by ‘The Who’ playing in my ears, while I took deep breaths to soak in the moments, as I rode past them, and I had a feeling that I can’t put across in words.

The closest I can think of, at the risk of sounding kinda stupid, to describe what I felt then is love. An emotion, that I have come to realize needn’t be directed towards anyone or anything under all circumstances, but can still be generated from within, to be brought to the surface in moments of sheer bliss.

‘There once was a note, so pure and easy, playing so free as a breath rippling by’.

The bike ride was ten km longer than the nearest alternative route through the ring road, but if I ever have to go to my friends’ place again, I know which route I am going to take – the expressway less traveled upon.