The LOO

                                                          Caution: Overly descriptive, extremely tiring, absolutely insignificant

My car is the only thing in my life which adhered to a map, followed a plan, course of which I had control over and most importantly, the only thing in my life (so far) that ever reached its pre set destination. I’ve been driving around the Bangalore streets for nearly 5yrs now. They say the city streets are the veins of any city and they are the direct reflections of a city’s personality. I don’t disagree, never cared either. For me streets were means to my destination just like the car was. The sights and sounds were not events but occurrences. Driving was not about the ‘journey’ for me it was just the course to my destination. I hated traffic, traffic signals, pedestrians – everything about the city streets. The more I drove, the more I hated, and 5^th yr driving – I reached the peak of hatred.

Nearly a month back, I made a job change. I was required to drive 25 Kms-2 way, everyday, at peak traffic hours -spending nearly 4 hrs driving to and from office. 

The 8^th alarm set on the phone woke me up, its not that I didn’t hear the remaining 7 ring…I lost track of how many alarms I snoozed and worriedly woke up thinking I ran out of alarms to wake me up. I know this is the only way I could convince myself to wake up and is precisely why I set 10 different alarms on my phone, one of the many scams I pull on myself. I’m not very generous to myself in time allotment; hence I fast forward through myself getting ready, at the end of which I already get tired, before even starting my day

Sitting down on the driver seat of my car, I take the second breath since I woke up, which transforms itself into a gasp half way, when I think about the long 2 hour drive ahead. Today needn’t be like any other day, there could be no traffic, rush or chaos on the street today, everybody in Bangalore could have over slept , the roads could be empty, If only the gear knob I’m holding onto was a magic wand.

I wait at the gates of my apartment to open, refusing to honk and break the serenity of a beautiful morning, hoping the security could sense my presence at the gate.”HONK”!  I could see a bunch of dogs and a couple of cows on the other side of the road, the sight through the grills of the gate make them look like they are caged. The security opens the gate, the caged animals in my imagination are let loose, so am I. The first 5 minutes of my drive, if shot in an aerial mode would resemble one of those very famous – old time arcade game, PAC MAN.  My car eats up every single dot (pothole) on the street; finally I lose ‘a life’ at the main junction when I bounce on one of those volcanic craters. I decide to buckle up and drive more carefully, I wipe my face off lethargy, flutter my eyes tight and take a deep breath. I flip the rear view mirror to my face to confirm I have the ‘drive more careful’ look. As I set the rearview mirror back, I glimpse out to see if there is any change to the ‘Panchar ‘shop around the corner. Sadly no change, it’s a common sight all across Bangalore streets, its always ‘the panchar shop’, as a matter of fact I’ll be hesitant to go to a panchar shop if its spelt correctly, the max I could do with is ‘Punchar’ shop. I reach the main road.

I reach Hogwarts right in time for the Quidditch. The wizards and witches on their broomsticks zooming, bending, turning, angling and swirling. If only they were real wizards and witches and if only this was the Quidditch, but this is Bannerghatta road and between their legs, is not broomsticks but bikes. I drive across the lane to the left and dissolve into the lake of cars flowing to the right. Just like each city has a personality of itself, each lane of the city at different points of time will carry a definite personality. The personality of that lane is more or less dictated by the fleet of vehicles flowing through it. It takes only 5 minutes for any new entrant to that lane to assimilate and behave according to the personality of the lane .Sometimes the lane flows with a sense of urgency, some times its laid back and lazy but most of the time when I travel its angry and shouting, and this personality reflects in each and every vehicle, pedestrian, animal, weather, policeman …Hell!  Even the traffic signals.

The giant billboard across the street of a hair fixing salon does not fail in reminding me how grave my superficial future looks. The bald man (before) looks very happy and handsome (after) with lots of hair. However for some strange reason, that poster works in reverse order for me. I could only picture how happy and full of hair (Now) I am and how ugly and bald (later) I would look. My mom doesn’t have a medical/dermatological background, but all I can do now is trust her hair oil. I know what dermatologically proven Bipasha Basu guaranteed shampoo did to me. I check one more time if my rear view mirror is of international salon standards and if it can help me gauge how serious the hair loss problem is. Full of hair! Now… at least. This is when I reach the first pit stop on my way. There is no wheel changing, alignment checking or refueling, but there is a strict and scientific time based performance checking. The speed/rashness of my driving for the next 15 minutess depends on what time(early/ontime/late) I reached that point. Similarly I have assigned quite a few such points where I judge how late I am.

In no time, I reach the land of magical pedestrians. The ones who think they could diffuse right through any car and reach the other side safely. This is the heavily pedestrian populated part of the entire journey, since there is a small market, school and a bus stop stacked one on top of the other. School kids with jet packs on their back rolled around like marbles fallen out .The magical pedestrians float across the street, tactfully avoiding the zebra crossing and cursing a local bus for not having doors on both sides so that they could use it as a subway. They play Ring Around The Rosie with a bunch of rickshaws and glide to the center of the street, right in front of my car. It is at this point that they realize their magical power has faded off miraculously, they panic, take 2 steps to the front, 3 to the back and 1 again to the front, much more to their surprise, they find themselves  standing exactly where they were already standing! Battling these strange phenomenon’s, they immediately pull their sensibilities together and try communicating to me with their eyes. A communication portal error or a unique planetary alignment makes this a failure too. Blessed with extraordinary amount of composure, they now raise their right hand with atmost elegance and sign me to stop. It is this charm of the gesture, not like how a police man would do but more like how one of those Babas would bless his devotees, what gives me the confidence to attempt to stop a 60km/hr car at once. The car did stop, my concern ended when I heard the car behind me screeching to a halt too. Everything behind and beyond that is not my concern, as it would not cause any physical damage to my car or monetary damage to me. I pull down my window and stretch my hand out , as if I was going to take an oath, this is how  I apologize to the car behind. Through the rear view mirror I could see him reciprocate by pulling down his window and stretching his hand out. I didn’t look further because I knew his acknowledgement to my apology would not carry all the fingers of his hand, probably a preplanned and selected ‘one finger’ would be used.

My non verbal and telepathic communication to people around me was abruptly cut, with a loud Tyfon. A giant blue color ship on 6 wheels drifted past me. The length of the vessel added to its elegance. The subtle blue and white stripes on it were reflections of the mighty ocean. The ship came alarmingly close to my car and I had to stop and let it pass by. The sight of such a massive structure, so close across the windshield of my car reminded me of the first installment of the Jurassic series. A thick puff of smoke out its chimney, signed off its presence and I read her name as BMTC. This is not the first time I saw them this close, it happens all the time but still, each one of those instances would make your heart skip a beat and each of those massive vehicles snatch respect out of you with its humongous built, arrogant drive, rough and dirty feel, and more than anything else the evil history that this breed of BMTC buses have. I look around and see quite a few of them swimming around me, my car looked like a gold fish among the massive BLUE whales. It didn’t hurt my ego, since there were a lot of guppies around too.

Turning the jog dial to the right, I tried to imagine how she would look like. She’s got this amazing voice, accent and a cheer in her voice. She could actually single handedly lift your spirits up with her voice, even on a lousy Monday morning like today. I felt generous and smiled at the’ not so funny’ joke she cracked, her Co anchor laughed louder though. They fought a bit, pulled each others legs, made people call them, threw away a few vouchers, endorsed some night clubs and counted their way to number one song of the day. I sang along, RJ’d along and answered all the random trivia and polls. I could even dub some of the ads on radio, since I’ve been hearing it for over 4 hours every day- driving. Then came the extra terrestrially evil segment of the show, the segment where they read out the ‘current time’.  The guy who claimed to be the “time man” announced the time to be something which was supposed to be the time 30 minutes later. I jerked more than what a Bangalore speed breaker could do, immediately checking the time on my watch. But it was too late, the high power electro magnetic waves that the “time man” transmitted from the super secret satellite orbiting our planet has already reached my watch! He remotely tuned my watch to match the time he said. He did it…again.

Michael Schumacher did an impressive lap, close to beating his own record set a week back (the day when he overslept and got terribly late). There was no turning back now; the Ferrari zoomed at full throttle, maneuvering the curves with unbeatable expertise. It looked as if nothing could make me late today. I could see myself standing at the podium, uncorking a bottle of G.H. Mumm and shaking it and spraying all the jubilation around. I could picturize it, feel it ……hear it? The windshield of my car looked as if it’s got measles, the champagne drops all over it…No ,it was rain.. Car slowed down, traffic slowed down, everything but my watch slowed down. Even the rain was lazy on a Monday morning like today, it wearily fell on my windshield. The measled windshield suddenly looked cracked as the rain dots started connecting each other. The drops acted like liquid magnets, attracting and diffusing. I could see the traffic signal turn red, and the brake lights of the cars made these rain drops crimson and shiny.  The drops kept attracting, moving and joining. They wouldn’t stop accumulating until they become big, then they slide down the glass and perish. Cosmic law , I suppose. I always felt that the only theory binding the entire universe is Irony. The bigger you get, the more you crumble at your own mass. The higher you fly the less important you become to the standard you used to measure your height. The faster you run the lesser you experience. I had a million such stupid theories of my own, large enough to associate each drop to one. But the crimson faded away, and the drops turned green. My wiper cleaned the drops along with it, my thoughts.

It stopped raining so did my car, at the millionth traffic signal. As one of my professors at college once said “Restlessness was my name” now. Something interesting had to happen now, or else I would be another example of unexplained spontaneous human combustion. A black color car pulled over, right next to me. The signal started counting down from 180, I never watch it come down, because the strip tease would take longer if I stare at it. I looked around, the black car, it was a Bugatti ! I was not quite sure if this was the interesting event I was looking for. The car was elegantly black and polished. It laid low and sleek. It was still and silent but something about it shouted and proclaimed its presence. A million eyes fell on it, but I was stupidly proud that I had the best seat in the house. In 2 seconds I was sad, Jealous , envious and overtaken by a whole bunch of other emotions, precisely for which that machine was made. I could only imagine how my life would have been, if I owned one of those. I wanted that life…I really did…everyone around me did too..ok..I was really jealous. Last 30 seconds to the signal, and I decided to look at it for one last time, and there it was …my irony theory. An old bearded man dressed in rags – what looked like a caftan , limbed towards the Bugatti , hands crooked but outstretched as much as possible. I see hundreds of beggars in Bangalore everyday, but as clichéd as It may sound, Seeing him, I wasn’t jealous of the Bugatti no more. I was happy to not be the poor man. He walked towards the Bugatti , but interestingly did not dare to tap the raised window. He tried looking through it and gave up immediately, he then turned back to me. A One rupee coin lying on the dash board of my car, which otherwise would have gone missing in a couple of days time, made me the better man today.  As I raised the window, I looked at the Bugatti and smiled to myself, proudly.

One and a half hours into the ‘journey’ and already 5 minutes late, I still had another quarter of the distance to cover. It started drizzling again. I knew I was going to be late by at least 20 minutes, what I didn’t know then was , I still had a broken down bus to tackle, a ‘signal jump’ ticket to collect and also a drenched shoes to dry before I reached office.

It’s been 20 days since that Monday; similar scenes repeated itself 2 times a day for most of these days.  I cried and complained to every other person I saw, about the horrendous 4 hours drive each day. 2 days back, I sat behind one of my friend’s bike, who was generous enough to drop me. There were no angry commuters, no insane pedestrians and no sharp curves or pot holes to maneuver, I just had to sit back and relax. The bike covered the entire distance in less than half the time I normally take. My friend was also generous enough to offer to do this every day for me, if I wished to.

But

These 4 hrs of drive in the past 20 days, taught me the most important lesson of my life...It taught me how to Love things. I explored a totally different dimension of Love. I learned to love things which are not human or “love worthy”. I learned to love insignificances. For me this love affair, with these insignificances is the most meaningful. They say, it’s the tough times and the hardships that bind people together, for me its these “horrendous “ 4 hours a day, that bind me with my world around. The game of PAC man I play with the pot holes excite me, the magical pedestrians charm me,the bald man in the billboard worries me, the radio girl cheers me,the rain drops make me a philosopher while a Re1 coin makes me the richest man around. Each and every day I go through a million of these insignificances and by day I love them more. My life will never be empty because I could now see things I never saw before. I learned to love insignificances. These 4 hours taught me how to live with my life.

I call up my friend and politely refuse the offer….after all …My Love, I don’t share.