Chapter 8
The
Creature In My Head
They
were a special security force and had a different sort of uniform. This is why
we couldn’t recognize them from a distance, as police or security forces. They
became very curious about us and enquired about our trip. One of them couldn’t
believe that we rode all the way from Kerala. They went around our bikes,
curious to know about the additional fittings. They then told us that it wasn’t
safe to ride this late and asked us to stay for the night at Dumka. However,
they cautioned us that the chances of getting a room in Dumka was less, as it
was a festival season and most of the hotels would be filled with visitors.
We soon
reached Dumka. The town was brightly lit with decoration lights. It was asleep
though. It looked like a house where a wedding had taken place; after a
hurry-burry day, when the festivities were over, but all those decorations
remained. It was around 1:30 AM. We went into a petrol bunk. A guy came out of
the small office room, rubbing his eyes. He had a smile on his face. While I
filled my tank, Khan and Mahesh went room-hunting. I noticed a small cot lying
in front of the office. “Ah, plan B is ready,” the miniature of me sitting
inside my head whispered into my ears. (You all have those little creatures in
your heads, don’t you? Conversations with them are more often the best.) Khan
and Mahesh returned after a failed mission. We then together explored the
streets of Dumka, desperately, for a room. The patrol police sympathized with
us. They tried to help us by directing us to a few more hotels. Nah, Lady
Fortune wasn’t in a good mood.
A car
came by and the guy in it asked us to stop our vehicles. He enquired about us.
When we told him that we were on a trip, he seemed excited. But then his speech
was flowing like a stream. It was when he got out of the car and took a couple
of steps that we confirmed that he was drunk. Sensing that it may not be wise
to engage him further, we scooted. He followed us. We went back to the petrol
bunk. The guy there came out, once again, with a sweet smile on his face. The
other three filled their tanks. My plan B had been rejected and plan C was on –
ride to the next town. The guy at the bunk told us that the next town was
about 60-70 km away, in the next state. The drunken guy reached there. He
started blabbering in Hindi. He switched to English once in a while. He was
trying to tell me that he was a rider as well, an adventurous one. Apparently,
he had been on many road trips and was planning an all-India tour on a Jawa
motorcycle. He kept asking whether I approved him as an adventurous guy. I
could see the petrol bunk guy sympathizing with me. Thorappan was giggling from
a distance. I engaged our adventurous, drunk hero till all of them had filled
their tanks to the brim.
Uncertainty
is adventurous; but the little creature in your head will not give you a second
of peace. “Where is the next town? Are there any hotels there? Would rooms be
available there? How are the roads ahead?” It keeps shooting questions at you.
After
about an hour, we entered Bihar and suddenly the roads became bad – terrible I
should say. As we have seen over the past few days (and blogs), bad roads, dust
and lorries are a deadly combination. We stopped at a roadside dhaba for tea.
There were a couple of charpais there for us to relax ourselves. I do not know
how to put it in words – that comfort you get when you get to lie down like
that; even the creature in your head has its mouth shut and is at peace. There
was a short man in this shop. He served us tea. We had two rounds of tea. Once
in a while a lorry would stop in front of the shop; the driver would get down
for a cup of tea.
The
dhaba where we stopped for tea…
We
tipped the short man as we left the place. He was a bit shabby, wearing a towel
and a dirty banyan. He was short, very short and had grey hair; must be in his
forties. As he took the tip from us, he had a smile on his face – a very
innocent one. It filled our hearts, to the brim. We wouldn’t forget that
smiling face for a while in our lives.
The ride
ahead was very tough. We counted every kilometer. The creature inside my head
started nibbling at my brain. We had no choice, but to ride on. There weren’t
any hotels on the way. There were roadside dhabas though. Some of them had a
few charpais in front of them. A plan D was evolving. We tried to push ourselves
further. Finally, we decided that we should stop at a dhaba (locally known as line
hotels) and rest for the night. But when we did stop, there was hardly any more
of the night left. It was 4:30 AM. We had tea as we got out of our gears. After
tea, we lay down on the charpais; we didn’t bother to ask the guy in the dhaba
whether it was okay to sleep there. We assumed that it was fine; there wasn’t
any other option either.
I woke
up suddenly. There was the road in front of me, across the road a vast field
and the sun was rising above the horizon. Perhaps, one of the best scenes I
woke up to in my life so far. It was around 6 AM. I woke up the others as well.
We had to get going. This was supposed to be a power nap.
There
was an old man in the dhaba. He was half blind. He too had been sleeping on one
of the charpais. Two kids, perhaps the grandchildren of this man, were playing
there. In fact, it was their chattering that woke me up. The boy was a naughty
little one. He kept pestering the old man. A man came there on his bike. He had
a chat with the old man. As he was leaving, the little boy wanted to go along
with him. The old man grabbed him off the bike and put him on a charpai. The
other guy escaped with his bike. The boy started throwing a tantrum. He
snatched the old man’s towel and dragged it on the ground. Revenge it was. The
poor old man had a tough time chasing the little one. This another man,
apparently the father of the naughty boy and the son of the old man, came and
scolded the kid. It felt odd, to just sit and watch those tender moments of a
family, in an unknown town in a faraway place.
We asked
for tea, which never came. After about 20 minutes of waiting, we got a feeling
that it was a signal for us to leave the place. (We do not know exactly why the
tea didn’t come.) They didn’t charge us for the charpais, which was very
strange as well. Nevertheless, we are indebted to that family for those two
hours of much needed rest.
We left
the place at 6:30 AM. The bad roads continued. The villages were waking up to
the day. It got busier with every passing kilometer. Soon we reached another
highway and thankfully the roads were good from then on. We stopped at a
highway restaurant for breakfast. My palms were clammy and there was a layer
of ‘dust and sweat mixture’ on my face. We had another 250 kilometers to
Siliguri.
Most of
the ride from breakfast to Siliguri was on auto-pilot mode. It is that mode in
which a 100 different things keep going on in your head, but at the same time
your sub-conscious mind is alert on the road. And then there are those moments
when you are shaken awake from your day dream – like when I was over taking a
lorry and there was a portion of a banana tree lying on the road and my mind
couldn’t decide whether to ride over it or to evade it and we eventually rode
over it and my back tire made some zig zag movements right in front of the
lorry and I almost thought I had made it to the newspaper.
It was a
very hot day and we were very exhausted. Mahesh and I were feeling sleepy as
well. We booked an OYO room in Siliguri, as we stopped for a drinks break.
At
around 2:30 PM, we reached the hotel. This time OYO didn’t disappoint us. We
got our rooms there. Almost 20 hours had gone by since we started our ride from
Kolkata, of which around 17 were spent on the road. It was not an achievement.
It was out of helplessness.
Nevertheless,
we and the little creatures in our heads were very excited. We would soon be
saying goodbye to the plains and embracing the mountains. Our two-year old
dream was just another 120 kilometers away, high up in the mountains!
(to be continued…)
No comments:
Post a Comment