The Don Quixote of Vidhya Nagar

The tacho needle revs to 7000 rpm, the engine screams at standstill, power shuddering through the fuel tank and to the handle bars. The screams are lost in the din, from the people passing and the two idling buses nearby. The hands of the rider are sweaty from the heat or maybe he is nervous, after all, so much is at stake. He looks forward , oblivious to his environs, taking in the essence, living the moment. Feet planted firmly on the ground, he is the picture of confidence for maybe none passing around would be as sure as he is at that moment. It was easy ,  glory was just within his grasp . He closes his eyes for a moment, sees what he wants, smiles, his body taut like a drawn bowstring ready to fly in an instant , the bike between his legs shuddering, raring to go at its master’s command. IT’S TIME …

Then something happens,

The thing with Indian summer and die-cast bike levers is that they do not sit well with each other. Now throw perspiration into this mix, you get a very slippery situation.

What happened next was quick, as in freakishly quick, those few fleeting seconds seemed like a life time to him. The clutch popped prematurely , slipped away from his fingers. All of a sudden he saw  it, saw it all , the jeering crowd, the trees, the omnipresent sun, the instrument cluster speeding towards his face and WHAM ! He felt the sun on his face , the slow wet warmth spreading from his nose and that few moments of weightlessness , the whole world around him slowly faded into silence. The cacophony of the over revved engine, the grinding of the gears, the jeering of the crowd and the anticlimax of the metal kissing the earth all turned into a soothing buzz faint yet distinct and everything faded into black…