Running down the edges…
When the car is gearing on a silent road under the inky clouds with tall crops on both sides waving to the rhythm of your vehicle, you can almost hear yourself sigh in wonder. You are not used to such moments of absolute peace as your life is a screenplay dictated by stress. You expect a leopard or at least a puny fox, if not a low-budget ghost in white sari, to spring out of that alluring green wallpaper and attack you. Nothing happens though. In fact, you are so much at calm that you wouldn’t mind being mauled to death. Your life lacks drama and a little bit of action won’t hurt.
Within a kilometer or two, this too shall pass.
The pothole-blessed roads will start bothering you again and so would the annoying songs chosen by your fellow-travelers. But for a very brief period of time, you are lost in serenity all thanks to what I call the trap. See, when your car is zooming on that thin strip of tar road, you are practically surrounded by what feeds you. Crops on left and right and escape is at north and south. Only an eagle with night vision can enjoy this sight more. You will stick to the road because nobody stops — wants to stop, actually — in the middle of the trap. You’d rather have a desert on either side of the road than tall green unprocessed food. Clear view any given day.
To our luck, our rear tyre exploded just as we outran the trap.
It was something; to be consumed by a calmness only to realize a few seconds later that your car is unstable. I panic a lot but when this particular incident happened, I turned into Yoda. Our designated driver was a reliable person and he got down to business immediately. Palla was feeling uneasy because she was on her period and had to find a washroom. Just as I was figuring out what to do next, the lamp-post at the corner of the road went blank. And then the sky shuddered for a bit, indicating rain.
Wow.
5 minutes later, the power came back and the road was mildly lit again. The clouds didn’t bother to cry. We noticed a shop not very far away from us and two of our friends and I accompanied my wife to the spot, two stayed behind with the driver, to check if the shopowner would let her use his washroom. Unsurprisingly, the shopowner’s wife showed up and asked missus and Sakshi to follow her inside the house.
We were on our way home within the next 20 minutes.
This blog post isn’t about what happened on our way back from the hills in Lansdowne (Uttarkhand). It’s about — no pizza for guessing — me.
When we reached our destination early Saturday morning, it was easy to appreciate the ambiance. The hills were wearing fog and the sky was uncertain about what it wanted in life. It was chilly initially but by the time we had our breakfast, it was pouring lightly. An hour later, the sun was out playing peek-a-boo with the mountain birds. We were allotted tents; 2 tents for 6 people because we hadn’t gone there to sleep. Some of us would drink while most would talk through the night. Well, that was the plan. And we had the best weekend by miles.
It was easy.
At the end of the day, we were tourists pretending to be travelers. We weren’t there to experience the local cuisine or admire the regional flora and fauna. We were there to escape our moribund reality even if it was for just two days. Which is why the trap didn’t last long enough. Which is also why the flat tyre didn’t add to the drama. On the contrary, it made my wife feel better while I spoke with the Cooch Behar-born shopowner outside his home-cum-shop about random things like weather and politicians in Uttar Pradesh.
