Memoirs of a(n) (un)pleasant sunrise.

What word comes to your mind when you recall the memories of a trip that u made to a hill station?? Good? Not bad? Awesome? Unforgettable? But for guys like Steve, Rob and six others, even “catastrophic” turns out to be euphemistic, let alone “disastrous” or “disgusting”.

It was a Saturday night and Steve was badly missing a beer for dunno how long. So he decided to move to a friend’s place, who equally patronized the idea. While Steve took the helmet and stood up to leave, Andy, his roomie asked, “so u are not coming for the trip today?”. “ I dunno. Am confused”, replied Steve. ”I wanna come. But I dunno if I will be able to after having this, u know..”. Andy said “fine u have it, and I will give u a call sometime before we go. If u are in senses, u join us..or maybe have just a little for the sake of it, come back here, wewi ll hit the roads”. Steve left, wondering how impractical the second idea was.

Steve later discovered that keeping a check on booze is not so impractical at all when you had higher priorities. He badly missed a bike ride as well. So at around 1 A.M, when Steve got a call from Andy, he told him that he would be coming. Steve reached hostel half an hour later to find that all’f’em(except Pete who was sleeping) were sipping their pegs. Steve joined’em but didn’t booze any further.

It went on till around 3 A.M when the guys felt it’s the right time to leave coz they wanted to see the sun rise from the hill top. So eight bikers (Steve and Pete, Rob and Andy, Kim and Derrick, Sandy and Georgie each pair in one) set out at around 3.30 in four bikes. They filled fuel and hit the roads, power-packed.

The next 45 minutes witnessed an adrenaline rush in all of them, with speedometer needles touching 100 and more. Georgie at times stood up from his seat as if to muster more energy for himself. Steve’s was the meanest bike of the bunch and with great effort he somehow made his speedometer needle kiss the 100 mark.

First break from the ride was supposed to be at the airport which lies around a good 5 miles off the express way. Guys reached there absolutely fine, got off their bikes, stretched themselves and cracked their knuckles. They moved to a coffee shop, bought coffees and brownies for themselves and realized how lean their pockets were. While on the move, they noticed three girls sitting on a table with a guy, engaging them apparently in what looked like a banter. What grabbed these guys’ attention were the girls’ exceptionally short outfits, making them really conspicuous. “Real cheesies”, Pete told rob. Next was the guy’s turn to walk up to them and tell Pete and Rob, ”5 k. Fine ?”. Rob and Pete looked at each other, bewildered. Pete took a moment, and replied “sorry mate. You spotted the wrong people” and sent him back. “Floozies rather than cheesies”, Rob told Pete, and both burst in to laughter. Next few minutes the guys saw themselves telling each other “I knew it” and “why he approached only Pete and Rob for this” sort of stuff. All had real fun and clocks ticked very fast. They felt it was high time to make a move or they were gonna miss the sunrise. All zealously got on to their bikes in no time totally unaware that rest of the trip was gonna throw them some real crises to test their crisis management skills.

“I am screwed here. I’ve got a flat tire”. Cried rob. Guys got off, gathered around the rear wheel of rob’s bike and saw the flat tire which was reminiscent of Tom which got ran over by a road leveler in the famous ‘Tom and Jerry’. They started turning the wheel to spot the nail or whatever that might have caused this, but with no result. Derrick said “ten minutes, nature’s call” and vanished. Guys started brainstorming as to what could be a solution for this as there were no repair shops in the vicinity.

From seven came more than 10 ideas, and finally they arrived at a consensus as to move to the highway together and look for shops. One unlucky bike had to load itself with three of them, and Rob would drive his bike alone, sitting somewhat over the fuel tank so that minimum pressure would go to the rear wheel. Derrick came back and they set off as planned. While on the way, Steve and Pete went further down the highway in lookout for the shop, found out one and waited in front of that for the repairer to come as it was too early for the shop to open. Rest of the guys went in the reverse direction, spotted a shop there and did the same. This unplanned split up triggered some heated arguments between them and guys exchanged among them, every possible abusive word known to man. Steve and Pete, apparently provoked by this, set off on their own, resumed the journey. Rest of them waited there for the shop to open, reprimanding each other and collectively cursing their bad luck.

Steve and Pete sped as much as they could so as to reach there in time and not miss the sunrise. They reached the hill top at around 6 and by then the place had started getting lit up a bit. They had to be in line and pay some money to park the bike and buy entrance coupons for themselves. Pete opened his wallet and showed Steve that he had gone bankrupt. The coffee and brownies had taken a toll on their financial status and had impoverished them. Steve opened his wallet and took out the whole 20 bucks that were left with him. 25 were what they needed. Steve gave Pete a ‘now what’ look. Pete said “wait a sec” and put his right hand into his right pocket and reached far down to see if something was there. His hand brought back a few coins which totaled to 8 bucks. Fair enough, they could go in. So they parked their bike and moved up to the view point. It was a tiring walk of around 15 minutes and they reached the top. Sun had risen which means they didn’t get exactly what they wanted but in their words, “60-70 percent of it”. They sat there for a while, conversed about topics varying from Katrina kaif’s acting to global warming. Later Steve got a call from Andy saying that they got the puncture sealed, were starting off so would reach the place within an hour.

Both of them took a stroll here and there, got the smell of dosas and stuff from nearby restaurants which made their mouths water. They looked each other helplessly, famished. “we won’t get even a peanut with what we have now. We’ll have to wait till they come”, said Steve with burp that reminded him of the aloo ke parathe he had around 14 hours back. Pete nodded. They spotted a water tap nearby and rushed to it and gulped several litres of water. They continued wandering here and there and found two swings, sat on them and swung themselves looking at each other. Their watches showed around 9-30 A.M. This sense of time made them realize that they hadn’t slept for past 24 hours and made them all the more sleepy. Plus they were tired like hell and couldn’t move any further. So they sat on two benches, Steve lay down on his. He had in his pocket, his wallet (Though empty, it contained his college ID card, loss of which would mean visiting different offices in his college and a hundred bucks) and his bike’s ownership documents. So he was a little ‘on alert’ and with great effort he managed not to doze off. Exactly five minutes later rest of the bikers made their entry and Steve and Pete got delighted to see them. Guys waved from distance and Steve and Pete gestured them to check out the places which they’d already seen and come back.

Steve almost had a heart attack when he noticed that his bike’s documents, which he had pushed in loosely to his pocket, weren’t there anymore. He jumped up from the swing and looked around. He saw the cover lying on the ground near to the bench where he lied down. He said “thank God” and rushed to it. He picked it up but his sense of relief died out when he saw that the cover was empty. The feeling that he had at that moment can be roughly compared to the feeling u get when you take a sip from a cup of very hot coffee not knowing how hot it is, or to the one u get when ur cell phone accidentally drops off in to water. U know that you are somewhat deep in shit, but u’ ve no idea what’s next. U scream, u use the F-word and do all the non-sense possible. U can’t help it.

Steve and Pete searched all around, enquired several people who came that way about this, but in complete vain. The thief had got away smoothly.

“hahha haah.. aah hahhaa..” Andy couldn’t stop laughing when steve finished narrating to them what happened to him. ”when u will start being a bit more careful, steve?” asked andy, trying to suppress his laughter . For a moment Steve dreamed of his clenched fists kissing Andy’s nose hard, but he knew that that was not gonna bring him back what was lost. Guys tried to cheer steve telling him that it was no big deal, getting a duplicate is quite easy. That eased him to an extent and he started pretending that he was cool.

For the next couple of hours guys did all weird stuffs possible like chasing kids out of swings and see saws and sitting on them posing for photos. Some guys felt the little merry-go- round so funny that went round and round on it until they felt that they were gonna puke.
At around 12 when one of them suggested that it was time they made a move, guys found a good degree of unanimity amongst them. Just one of the things hunger can do. Bring people together. (By the way Steve and Pete’s day dreams of filling their stomachs had remained dreams because the rest of the guys also came with almost empty wallets).

Steve and Pete were first to set off, and they hadn’t gone more than a couple of miles when Pete proposed that they better wait for the rest of them to catch up. So Steve pulled over and waited for them to come. A minute later they saw Sandy, Georgie and Andy coming on a bike, Rob following them slowly sitting over the fuel tank. Rob’s face then had a shape very similar to his tire which went flat for the second time . Andy gestured them to follow rob, and moved on.
Pete and Steve looked at each other for a moment, bewildered, quickly gained senses and set off behind Rob. A few miles ahead of that they found a repair shop and “hospitalized” it. The repairer was taking a good amount of time for fixing it and they all started going bonkers with hunger. Somehow they managed to buy two small packs of biscuits which they shared among themselves and the two apparently hungry stray dogs which kept hanging around these guys, forcing them to give them a share.

It took around 45 minutes for the for the bike to get fixed and once it was done, all got on to their bikes in no time and sped as much as they could coz everybody was equally desperate to get home, feed their stomachs something and sleep off. This hunger and desperation made them drive so furiously, on the highway that the interceptors couldn’t help tracking them. Cops got alert and at a traffic signal sandy’s bike was spotted by one cop and stood in his way to stop him. Sandy smelled trouble and quickly dodged to his right, bypassing the cop. The cop, provoked by this, spat on sandy’s face but luckily it missed the target. All that he could do was to hit Georgie (who was sitting behind sandy) on his back as hard as he could, and Georgie was seen rubbing his back with his left hand to ease the pain.

Rob and Andy too, had dodged the cops in a similar way and they took a service road to avoid further trouble. But with them, it was not so easy coz the cops followed them there too and they had to park the bike somewhere and when the cops asked them if they had any idea whose bike it was, they had to act like some poor pedestrians on the street and they shook their heads.
Steve saw at a traffic signal, a police man coming towards his bike so and he also managed to get away unscathed by hiding his bike behind a large truck and sneaking away from there, smoothly. Guys by this time, completely lost track of where their co-bikers are and continued on their own.
Steve couldn’t express his delight when they entered the city. He drove, counting every meter and finally reached a restaurant where each one of these guys invariably love having food from, with some money they took from the ATM. Both(He and Pete) ordered for everything that came to their minds and ate like mad. “haven’t had this delicious food in years”, said Pete as he finished his usual lassi, bottoms up.

Steve and Pete were the the first to reach the hostel and saw each of the others coming in later, with faces resembling those of soldiers in 1st world war, as they come back from their battle fields at the end of the day. As they all assembled in one room and started narrating their miserable stories to one another, a friend of theirs, Sean (who didn’t go for the trip), dropped in and asked. “How was it buds, looks like you all had a lot of fun??”

They looked at each other and one of them was heard replying- “Ya, we did. We in fact had too much of fun for a single day. And u missed all the ‘fun’, pal”.. And they all left to their rooms, desperate to catch a wink, leaving Sean in total mystery..