A time to ride...

The rains are here again and this is when while the city goes crazy, the roads leading out of it get even more sensual. The fields get green and where there used to be lay ditches, dried wells, dusty ponds and algae bottomed lakes, its soon going to be just water and water.

Red, ochre and brown, as earthy as most of us who ride - full to the brim and looking for release.

And the roads, oh the roads, the roads themselves. They look more as if they have been washed in the best detergent the R&B department could buy, displaying all their patterns, shades and tones when dry - or just look freshly laid when wet!

This is the time to ride, this is the time to ride, when the country roads are flanked by the dense green palisades of thorn, when the grass meadows are flush with button sized wild flowers in yellow, blue and pink, when every tank, kunta and cheruvu will be full, when riding through some blessed forest area, you will run into a wall of living, fluttering butterflies, when....

This is the time to ride, when after a hot (till then rain free) day, the first showers of rain seem to turn to steam when they hit the blazing tarmac, when after 3-4 days of a dry spell, you can literally hear the arrows and javelins that the heavens release sizzling into blunt-headed nothingness on the dusty earth, when at a sudden bend in some interior road you come onto a fresh water puddle on the tarmac, pure enough to drink and serving as the private pool of some rusty tailed, beady eyed Coucal, when what you thought was a shadow in the foliage turns out to be an intent on love Peacock, when you do not really know if you should ride or just stop and see the life all around you, when....

This is the time to ride, when with the blackheads gathering, the sun seems to become a bulb suffering from dipping voltage, observed by the way the glimmer of the centre nut gets lesser and lesser, when if you are far away from anywhere, the smell of rain sometimes becomes much more than a reason for thrill, but a cold clammy fear gnawing at your heart, when a cloudburst decides to become something more and even as you are riding on and riding blind, your face wet, your eyes streaming, you engine note suddenly deeper, you just realise that, you still are not out of the deluge, not yet....

Yes, the monsoons are over Hyderabad, they are over the Deccan and its a time to ride. But then, when wasn't it a time to ride?