The Motorcyclist

At its zenith, a full and bodacious moon whitened the heavens above as a lone Bullet snaked up through the Mothugudem Ghats. The night was typical of the summer, tropical interiors and the forests of the Deccan, the air warm and thinned out for most part - with pockets that smelled of swamp, rice-fields and water-holes - redolent with the heat of the day already 6 hours past.

Sitting straight and alert, his Denim Jacket and Denim pants comfortably draped over his road-limbered body, the motorcyclist looked as if he could ride till the proverbial end of the world, just on and on.

The night had always been his element and the remoteness anyway meant that there was not much incentive to stop for anything apart from a hurried smoke or an urgent leak behind the bushes.

His scalp itching under the battered, dust covered helmet, he luxuriated in the feel of the moving night air balmily caressing his face - through the open visor - the hair of his beard and moustache fluttering with every turn as he ascended up on a road he knew not much about.

His thoughts went back 200 kms and 6 hours, to Junglepally and the small Forest Check Post where he had decided to turn off from N.H. 211, after 3 hours of riding non-stop - at speeds averaging 100kmph - bored by the monotony and thirsting for a mystery road. The village wit who bummed a smoke from him wanted to know why he was headed on a road that "did not go anywhere". Usually, he would have laughed it off as something typical of the inanities of the road and forgotten it forever.

But tonight, somehow that question was fluttering and flying in his head, like a tetchy bat in a dark cavern; awaking another thousand questions he had always assumed to be permanently asleep.

Am I truly yet another average Joe?

Is this riding - usually with absolutely no real destination in mind - truly indicative of my aimlessness in life?

Or is it my way of giving the finger to a world that is all about stereotypes, my way of proclaiming my independence?

Even as one unwelcome question led to yet another unwelcome question in the depth of his being, he suddenly seemed to have ridden into a spellbinding world of luminescence, suddenly it seemed it was day.

The Ghat stretch ended and to his left, for as far as his trail-weary and crow-feeted eyes could see, there were the rolling, limpidly lit expanses of the Sabari's highland catchment area. Almost out of no volition, as if guided by a power and reason without, he eased off on the throttle, geared down to neutral and then braked to a smooth stop at the very edge of the drop. Stretched out below him and beneath the Bullet's front wheel, the reservoir glinted at its middle like it was of beaten silver, the troughs of the small ripples dribbling with a glint like fool's gold and the gentle waves coursing landwards liquidly like mercury.

Almost as suddenly, as if born out a Cherub's breath or a Nightjar's fluttering wings, a breeze started blowing, carrying the cold air that sat on the reservoir's waters, upwards to his sweat-soaked body and still-hot Bullet, cooling things only the way something truly wild can.

With rapidity reminiscent of the changing of weather on a high-altitude pass, the breeze strengthened into a gale and clouds started scudding across the till-now empty skies, their dark shadows flitting across the reservoir and dappling the waters. The air no longer just smelled of the wilds and the still waters, overlaid on everything else now was the fragrant smell of a summer-baked earth soaking in the first drops of rain - somewhere just around him, even though beyond his immediate sight - satiating his entire being through his nostrils.

Outwardly looking the same, the motorcyclist was now at inner peace. The reverie was now broken and though he still couldn't remember those thousand questions; he realized that he finally had the answer to why he was the way he was. Mentally congratulating his instinct - something that had led him to packing the raincoat and plastic sheets - he wheeled the Bullet below a massive Neem tree with a Choupal that could be a welcome bed for the night.

Bike parked, he again walked to the rim of the reservoir, lit up a smoke and gazed across what was uncontestedly his own kingdom. His and his alone, at least for that one moment when the first drops of rain would raise a toast to the mystique of a Full Moon shining on deep waters in wilds criss-crossed by mystery roads.

He was already thinking forward to riding through the rain-blessed forests on the morrow as the first fat, bodaciously big raindrop hit him in the face; a face split in a grin that was sheer happiness.