Far from the madding crowd

Far from the madding crowd?

Oh yes.

Far from the effed up city traffic?

Oh yes, very much yes.

Just around 10 days back, I finally took a call and got the barrel
and piston on the Bullet replaced. I have been a bit around this
country on that barrel and piston and done close to 90k kms on it.
But still, technically speaking it shouldn't have
failed / ceased / seized. My current mechanic is soft-spoken,
highly skilled and very very wise (he's touching 60) and
according to him the piston overheated and failed. Incredulously,
not because I was racing at 130 kmph on the highway,
throttle locked and hunched like a jockey on my iron horse.
But because, I had negotiated a 55 minutes long
crawl -- Basheerbagh -> Liberty -> Tank Bund -> Sindhi
Colony -> Paradise X Roads -> Vikrampuri (where the engine
conked out), largely in 1st and 2nd gear on yet another
forgettable evening when the city's traffic was well and
truly fucked.

In other words, I got trafucked.

Is that a word (yet)? I don't know, but I am sure
Hyderabad's traffic won't get better, rains or no rains.
There are just too many people and too many cars to give
the city's roads any chance to be orderly.

So the thirst to be far from the madding crowd...

Another reason is that I am now running in the aforementioned,
"new" barrel and piston, a task that is not exactly easy,
requiring as it does inordinate patience, a nose (literally)
for the smell of over-heating, a total disregard for the passage
of time and so on and so forth...

Whatever some of my other biker / rider friends may say,
somehow the idea of running-in the city doesn't make sense
to me, after all I don't want to get trafucked again...

So I have been riding around on the highways and man, oh man,
have I been tripping or what?

Two of my status messages (from Facebook) to illustrate
what's on my mind while on the road


Then – a single lane, sunlit
dapple ground for mango, banyan and neem.
Now – a wide carriageway, to hurtle or airstrip,
in antiseptic speed. With a median that's a country
road – of grasses nodding sagely,
riding breezes and slipstreams. What remains
of that sunlit dapple ground – like a single leg
of worn blue denim, still catches sight.
Here light puddles bright,
as golden shelled maize, tanned brown paddy.


(This was after an approximately 250 kms -- to and
fro -- ride on NH 7, one of my familiar haunts for
most of my riding days in the Deccan)


The roads belong to no one,
but S.H.1 remains mine –
blessedly alive
as a beating vein on the back
of my right hand
– like my throttle wrist.
For 78 kms under a mellow November sun.
To a bit before Siddipet (and back).
Through a rain-soaked Deccan bursting
with colours – yellow-flowering gram,
“oh-so-white” cotton, wildflowers
I know not the name of and
the good, green earth.


(This was after a traipse on the road that leads
to Shamirpet Lake and a lot beyond, again a familiar
haunt for as long as I have been riding
in the Deccan)

There's a lot more of running in left and to make things more
time-consuming I also finally bought a Nikon D-90 (an impulsive
purchase using the only credit card I have) so I am hoping I will
traipse around some more and compose something poetic with my eye.

Somewhere far from the madding crowd.