Cows on Ice, and Others..

Nov 4th, 2006

There is no pain, you are receeding

No distant ship smoke on the horizon..

So here it is.. Another two weeks, another session comes to an end. This one is a little tricky. The bunch refuses to put in any effort at work, but are more than enthu otherwise. Following one short conversation where I told them that I enjoy a Single Malt now and again, they present me with a bottle of the stuff on the last day, and make me think about whether I actually behave like an alcoholic. Also, they decide that we must bond, over food and booze, and that On Toes is the place, Juhu being the targeted zone. What chance do I, but a lesser mortal have?

Thus we set out, me having picked up Pumpy from the zone of the to-be-condemned, the e-learning room (though the kind of things that one learns there leaves a lot to be desired, yes siree). After a quick smoke downstairs, I get Ea from the garage, and Pumpy clambers on. We thump out-the-gate. Five seconds later she almost has a heart attack, and from there on, every minute includes a delightful onset of palpatations, followed by a shriek, everytime the brakes are hit. She be unsettled, and to put it in a wise man’s words, “as awkward as a cow on ice!”

She ’sits’ on the brink of falling, fretting and fuming, and just when I’ve kind of calmed her down, my true love, Ea gives up on me. And then it begins..

At some point on the longest road in the city, (not to mention ‘while I was following someone since I didn’t know the way’) Ea shuts down. And she is not easily persuaded to come back to life. Pumpy isn’t too happy to begin with, and now she’s definitely gonna do something drastic.. I dunno .. maybe hug someone. This calls for serious thought. I check Ea quickly and professionally, with the look and touch of someone who’s been doing this for years. I check the ignition, the battery, and exhaust pipe, and carburettor, and my mind, by my phenomenal powers of deduction, manages to decipher the problem in a short 3 minutes.. It says,

‘Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire.’

I nonchalantly express my thoughts on the matter, suggesting that a little petrol wouldn’t really hurt at this point. So we start walking around looking for a fuel station. Pumpy says she’s never walked down this road before. I tell her I haven’t either. Adventure is always good. Change, the only constant. Do not expect, for it is futile. Just live. Period. A five minute rickshaw ride, and we’re there. Pumpy is forced to hand over her Aquafina bottle, thankfully its empty. We quickly fill it, and return. Five minutes later Ea still shows no signs of Coming Back to Life. My powers of deduction start hinting that something may be wrong after all.. And just then, she returns! She speaks.. God Damn it.. She ROARS!.. And Pumpy and I are off again.

Here I am, on the road again

There I am, up on the stage

Here I go, playing star again

There I go….. Turn the page

The stop has taken about twenty minutes, and my poor trainees in the car ahead are still waiting for me, bless them. I stop for a quick fuel top up and we’re on our way to Juhu.. WOOHOO!! It is a pleasant ride, save the occasional bump on the road which causes certain hyperactive-i’m-shitting-bricks-type-individuals sitting in close proximity to make the bike almost capsize. We pass the Big B’s house, and she pokes fun at how small it is.. Maybe Robert De Niro could do better. We compare property rates in the US and our city. We talk about issues, and I tell her about this incident when I was a child (and at the risk of sounding like a complete fool, ‘I had (not!) a fever’)..

*Blink*

So I was on my way to Delhi from Chennai, I think. Must’ve been about six years old. Maybe seven. My mum was fooling around with her toes. She kept hacking away at them with this silvery knife like thing. I asked her what she was doing, to which she replied that she was making her nails sharper. Enlightenment dawned upon me. my face started shining with realisation.

Fifteen minutes later my mum smacked me upside the head, and asked me what I was doing. I replied that I was using her ‘Nail File’ for its proper use - to sharpen. What exactly was I sharpening, she wanted to know. I looked at her as though it was more than obvious, and returned the file with a huff.

I had this thing.. People (equals my parents) would keep making fun of me because I had a button nose, which showed no signs of growing at the same pace as the rest of me. I had had enough, and decided that the file might actually be the answer. Unfortunately.. sigh..

*Blink*

She laughs. Pumpy is amused. God damn humans! Here I am, narrating a rather embarassing incident in my life in the name of bonding, and she laughs! The audacity of the turtle-nosed specimen!

We finally reach On Toes, its about 5.30pm. The time is right. The time is perfect. It calls to us, My Precious.. Kingfisher. We step up to the entrance, at which point we’re politely informed that the doors open at seven. So much for that outing. This mortal is condemned. This day shall not go down as a day where people did normal things.

So here we are, cracking jokes, at the corner of the street, and I feel like I’m laughing within.. etc.. etc.. We sit, chat about random crap, while some of the trainees from Dimension X inspect Ea and pay her compliments. She looks fatigued, and needs rest. A little trickle of engine oil down the side sparks a rather technical and therefore, boring conversation which I get out of ASAP.

I decide that I cannot possibly sit around till seven. So I ask random people walking down the street where the nearest Beer joint is. Unfortunately everything is shut nearby. Its not customary to drink before seven. Apparently it doesn’t speak well of one’s character.

So I do the next best thing. I drag Pumpy along, and go get myself coconut water. Just too tempting to resist. And, believe it or not, the chap had refrigerated coconuts!!! End result - Satisfaction Guaranteed!! After much fussing and hemming and hawing - the usual formality ( = gimmicks!), she has one too. Five minutes and nirvana later, there I am, eating the last of the coconut cream (direct translation of Malai!) and wishing there was more. But, like all delicious things, this too must come to an end.

By 6, we have had enough. So we demand our right to get wasted on a Saturday evening. It works, and by a quarter past, we’re seated inside On Toes, which is smelling of freshly sprayed room freshner. We have just spent ten minutes trying to get the seating figured out, and now there is peace. The calm before the storm.

We order. And there it is.. the promised land? More like the promised Sea.. pitchers of beer, hell yeah! We wait for the usual accompaniments, but none arrive. So I call out.. Mishra, where are the peanuts? to which he says that they aren’t complimentary any more. This catches me by surprise. Just the though of it. To drink without munchies??!! Can this really be happening. Also, not to mention the fact that I was there the night before, devouring the freebies! So I call out again, ‘Mishra, call Ramkishen ji (our usual server). He’ll get us peanuts.’ Once Ramkishen ji’s name is taken, action is swift. A cheer goes up around the table, with the coming of the peanuts. And Surd said, ‘Let there be Joy. And there was Joy.’

Two hours, a few beers, and some hard rock later, we’re ready to push. By ‘we’ I probably mean Pumpy and I. We pay up, I profess undying love for my batch, and we’re on our way. Since we have no direction in life, she ends up back at my place. Del and Loki are home, Del hurriedly trying to cover his modesty as Pumpy walks in. Fifteen minutes later she’s on her way home. Now finally, for some peace and quiet after a long, hectic day…