Roadrash!!!

Back in college days (1997-2001), when PCs were becoming popular in Kerala, 'Roadrash' was one of the games which had glued me to a seat. (Well, to be frank, I was never much of a computer-gamer; Roadrash, Minesweeper, Solitaire & Mah Jong being the only ones I've ever laid my hands on, other than the ones I had authored myself: a flavor of Othello, a memory game which I christened 'Ormma', and 'MathWars' which I wrote to improve my calculating speeds.)

I guess Roadrash got popular exploiting man's inherent urge for transgression, adrenaline, and a passion for lawlessness. I used to play on all the four routes available in my version, and was thrilled to the core when I could take a real-life drive along two of them: the 'Napa valley' & the 'Pacific Highway', when I worked in the USA.

Anyway, my taste of Pune roads during the current month-long visit surpasses all those elements of transgression, lawlessness and adrenaline-rush!!! read on...

Check out the picture to the right (from vitualpune.com) - this is the typical traffic on a busy Pune road. Okay, you might think that it sucks - you'll be stuck in traffic. hehe... Are you kidding..???? Yeah, if you are on a bus or a car, you might be stuck... but if you are on a motorcycle or an auto-rickshaw? That's the thrill !! Let me explain:

Imagine you have a glass jar, and you fill the thing with pebbles. Now, the jar is full, none of the pebbles can move. Say, you drill a tiny hole at the bottom of the jar - a real tiny one, through which none of the pebbles can pass. Okay..? Now, this is the traffic condition, and pebbles are the 4-wheelers and higher. Now, say, you start pouring sand into the jar :-) You see where I'm getting at..? ;-) You pour the sand into the jar, and keep shaking the jar - the sand flows seamlessly out of the hole at the bottom - the sand is the millions of motorcyclists and auto-rickshaws. Now, tell me... how would you like to crawl and slither out of a hundred pebbles, racing against the other motorcyclist like "Hey, haha.. I found a 2-inch gap there, loser !!! Lemme stick my front-wheel in there.. whoo hooo... the sucker infront of me twitched an inch so that his motorcycle doesn't get scratched!!! Loser!!! I win.. I win... now I plunge into that inch.. okay, now, there is the next sucker there.. he seems to be holding back not to scratch that car... loser!!! Its not yours... its somebody else's... why do you care..? there is no place for courtesy here... just the race to get ahead... its only fools who are polite... okay... enough of philosophy... here I commmmeeee.. Cool... I got ahead, and hehe, scratched that car too... Now, this guy in front - lemme honk my irky little horn, so that the loser gets pissed off, and move quarter an inch - I can push myself through it" And, thus, they go, everyday, dawn till dusk and dusk till dawn!!

The first time I saw the following, I couldn't hold my laughter :-) :
I was riding along this one-way lane, and suddenly a car comes against me!!! Against me, on a one-way lane, and he honks me, and gestures me, to get out of his way!!! ("Easy, tiger!!!") And then comes a motorcyclist dude, honking his irritating horn all the way, non-stop (don't they have eardrums???), again, against the traffic on the one-way lane. I mean his face is like "Can't these jerks see that I'm coming? Losers!! all of them mere filthy human beings who follow traffic rules - I rock!!! I'm the king!!! I'm so cooooool"

Then, I got used to this sight... So, I just give way to the cool dudes... And sometimes, I gesture them to appreciate their 'cool'nessness (ofcourse, sarcastically!) - A thumbs-up or an appreciative face-gesture... I mean, I could never do this!!! (I feel responsible to follow traffic rules. I know how it contributes to the big picture.) That makes these dudes cooler than me! They are the 'next level' citizens, above civil laws.

There was something funny that happened while I was returning from office during one of my initial days here: there was this traffic junction where the lights were red, and I had to pull up. A car pulled behind me, and started honking. After 10 seconds, I pumped up the volume of my iPod to cut out the annoying sound, but after another 30 seconds of constant honking, I turned back, and gestured (circles against my temple with forefinger) to the driver whether he had gone cuckoo, and pointed to the red-light. He paused for a while, and continued with his honking ("Dude, gimme a break").

Well, I guess people adapt, even with annoying things of life... We learn to live with it :-) a couple of weeks in Pune, and I don't feel bad about these anymore... Its just funny to watch how people live their lives out...

Who knows..? may be if I stay here long enough, I might adapt even further, to be part of them... And one day, one of my friends might be on a visit to Pune, stuck up in traffic, and I'd be doing my 'sand' thing... :-)
He/she might call out to me "hey!!! tedka, is that you..?"
And, I'd be like "Hey, buddy!!! watchu doin' here..? oops, hold on.., email me, okay..? I see an inch clearing up there... gotta go... (and, to the poor guy infront of me, who moved an inch yielding to my filthy honk) hey loser, here I come!!!!! scooooooooby doooooby doooooooooooo"

:o))

Tail-piece: Pune Traffic control branch's website: punepolice.com with instructions to pedestrians, cyclists and motorists.

Aati kya Khandala?

Okay, so it was my 2nd weekend at Pune; half of saturday went partly at the gym, and mostly in reading up stuff and working on a presentation. Dude, weekends are to chill-out - throw that laptop away!!!. So, mounted my (? oye, its Shoby's!) motorbike, and took off to Dann's & Ajith's. Dann was already off to Trivandrum for the long weekend, and Ajith's bro, Sreejith had come to Pune for his. So, we decided upon a Hindi movie (Hattrick) for the evening, and a bit of trekking for the afternoon. So, rode to Baner and went up the hill to fetch a glimpse of sunset. But alas, the stupid sun had already set!!! An hour there, and then off to E-Square for the movie. Dropped by at a Smoking-Joe's on the way, for some Indianized Pizzas. Well, as for the movie, Hattrick turned out to be a pretty good entertainer, after all!

Thus came the dusk, the dawn and day 2nd !!

Went to church, worked on the presentation again, and got bored. Why not go on a trip somewhere..?? Khandala ? Why not ? Checked with Sanjay, the caretaker guy of the svc apartment if he could show me around, for which he happily cheered. Okay, mounted the motorbike, filled up from the nearby fuel station and off to Khandala.

Pretty long ride for a hot day! You know what..? I'm always at Pune at the wrong time of the year - Summer!!! The last time I was here, it was the summer of 2004 (There's another tale on it - A mid-summer memory). Anyway, we were at Lonavla by 1:30 PM, saw around a bit, checked out the Valvan Dam, which ought to be at its height of beauty after the Monsoon in October; but pretty much sad, dusty and dried up now.

Back on track on the Mumbai-Pune highway (Oh, not the expressway - two wheelers are not allowed there) to Khandala, reached the Rajmachi point in another half an hour or so. Well, what should I say except "I ought to come back after the monsoon"? sob sob... its all dried up and dusty, dude!! and they say its heaven after the showers!! Its like the film and the photo - the opposites !!!

Anyway, went down the steeps of the highway for a while more, and then took a U. Back on track to Pune, but the Karla caves had other plans for us. Okay, now, this was pretty cool - the whole thing is up on top of a pretty tall granite hill, and was built during the 2nd or 3rd century BC by Buddhist monks. Two ways to reach the top:
1) All the way up in foot
2) Half the way up in your vehicle, and the rest on foot.
Being lazy, I opted the second.

Ha !! you won't believe it!!! 45 degree climbs!!!!! I've seen such stuff in the USA (like a block of the Lombard street in San Fransisco), but that was in a Car!!! On a motorcycle - wooooooh - you ought to try it once !!! The ascent and descent - both are cool - when u climb, u'll feel that the bike's gonna fail you any moment, and you might fall all the way down; and as you look up to see what's there beyond the climb, all you see is the sky!! And, when you climb down, again all you can see is the blue sky beyond the turn at the end of the descent!!!! wooooooh :-)

Okay, picture this now
1) u r climbing up the 45 degree one, and say, u r lowering ur gear from 2nd to 1st, and u pull the throttle a bit tight! :-) hehe, ur front wheel goes up, the weight of the pillion rider adds to it, and there u go. Question - would you go down the hill, or straight up ? (to ur Father in Heaven!!!) ;-)
2) You r climbing down the 45 degree one, you are almost at the end, near the turn to the next steep, and say, suddenly you pulled the clutch lever :-) hehe... Would u go up, or down..? ;-)

Okay, enough of adrenaline-puzzles - once the motorway was over, and we had to climb up in foot, it was a different story :-( May be I have to work out more - an extra hour of cardio..? perhaps..? Anyway, it was pretty decent - all the way up, and on top of the world!!! The stone-carved caves and shrines where pretty cool too. The inscriptions on the walls and pillars were in Brāhmī script, so, couldn't do much other than staring at them, and trying to act smart ;-)

Well, that was it !!! A pretty cool (or hot??) afternoon, was back at Kalewadi by 6.30 PM, Sanjay made us strong coffee, I browsed through the day's TOI, and then got back on my presentation :-)

Sorry that there are no snaps :-( but I was kinda lazy to pack my camera and stuff when I took off to Pune :-) !!! (Idiot)