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NIGHT BIKING = NIGHTMARE

Last night was a terrible experience in my rickety old bike .I had gone to the central railway station to drop my father ,parking my vehicle at the guindy station. I had also managed to drop into my classmate Achut’s place in triplicane at around 8 pm and stayed there till 9 pm. I got into a beach-tambaram local BG EMU train and the train got delayed after waiting for more than 10 minutes at Park and egmore stations respectively.I got so engrossed in thinking about my college life,to the extent that I had missed getting down at guindy station and got off only at the next station ST Thomas Mount , for the umpteenth time.I got a return connecting train that dropped me back at guindy….and this where the story begins……………

My choke wire in my bike had been broken and had fallen down somewhere,earlier in the day.My bike generally starts with the Choke on….especially during the night time.I reached guindy at around 11 pm and tried kick starting my bike for about 15 minutes,It wouldn’t start ……and to compound things was the rain clouds looming large at night,it would become terrible If I were to be stranded all alone in the rain,but thankfully the skies didn’t cry that night.

My abortive attempts at starting my bike went on till 11 15, when I requested a couple of rare passerby’s to help me with starting the bike. The bike refused to start …..And raised the anxiety level in me, whether I would reach home at all last night. After pushing the bike …to a distance I spotted a couple of auto drivers, who were quite adept in the mechanics of biking and helped me start my bike in a jiffy, But there was this unstated clause which I soon found out that, If I slowed down the bike by applying the brakes ,or reduced a gear , the bike’s engine would be switched off.

This was a SPEED like scenario where I had to maintain a constant speed at one particular gear ……failing which the engine would switch off and again starting the bike would be a nightmare. I had to drive at 30-40 km’s an hour speed unmindful of the pits and potholes and the slush that was in it. If I had normally seen a pothole,I would slow down and try to avoid it,but last night ,getting home was high on the priority ,so slowing down was never on the agenda.Thankfully there were no heavy vehicles coming in my opposite direction,otherwise I would have had to reduce my speed and put the brakes on.

I came home,with my legs and bike bathed in slush. I was happy that I had made it home last night …even though I had to endure a dangerous biking journey …..imagine driving into slush filled pot hole at 40 kms/hr …….with the water splashing allover me and my bike…..it was certainly a journey worth forgetting.