Dude Who screwed The Alto....

When your mood is off, you tend to run away from the place which caused the switching off. That explains travelling as a wonderful refresher. I would not go into why mood was off but that day travelling was the most preferred thing after office. I came home and thought of biking and going to Mysore.

Called Rajneesh, my company in all the places I have been to after coming Bangalore.
"Shall we drive to mysore...Are You free and ready to go.." I enquired.

"Have I ever refused to go...I can go anywhere...provided you are there in the trip.." He replied..
That used to be my answer to all his queries before...I had this belief that it’s not the destination that I enjoy, it’s the journey and the company on the journey. Ignoring the sarcasm I asked him to come down my place and we can leave as early as possible .We wanted to catch the IPL Semifinals in Mysore after all. I had little interest left as the team I supported was out in the first semis. But still reaching Mysore in 2 hrs meant real fast driving and that I was game for.

Unfortunately it started raining. But fortunately our dude came on Car. I keep referring to him as dude for the obvious reasons. He was a Dude. I was lucky enough to start as around 6 30 pm and thought with car I may still reach by 8 the IPL time.

We packed the necessities and went off in the rain. The bets on the IPL matches and the girls in our life were the common topic these days. Dude as I said earlier was suggesting some psychology of girls when suddenly a tractor with a ploughing machine appeared out of nowhere in the dark. Actually little did we realize that we were going at 50 and the truck at 10. My physics relativity would have calculated the relative velocity in a second but even that calculation did not help as the tyres had stopped but we kept skidding and banged into the ploughs. Actually the rain had further spoiled as the brakes were literally ineffective . The driver of the tractor turned around and looked as if we had waked him up from the sleep. His glare made me to shout...

“Where are the backlights you idiot...”

The tractor drive smiled after listening to me as though saying...

"Forget my backlight...Check your headlight..."

Both of us had felt the jolt though the effect wasn’t great and the car kept moving without any hiccups with full lights glowing. We both consoled each other that it was just a small hit and nothing much has happened and never had the courage to stop and check. Rain and darkness dint help the cause either. So we continued driving but for a change stopped talking to each other for a while. Silence.
"Chala jaata hoo kissi ki dhun me..."...My mobile rang...that was the ring tone. So untimely and so very situational. It broke the silence and yes I could see it in dude’s eyes that the song hurt. Real Bad Hurt. I picked up the phone and on the other side of mobile call was Prashant.


"Well Punjab has lost 4 wickets for some paltry score of 34...”
I could almost see despite the distance being about 100 kms the wry smile on Prashant’s face. He knew I had my inclination towards Punjab if any...But that news brought back the smile on our Dudes face. He was a 'Dil Se' Supporter of Chennai.

But before he could say anything. I cautioned him..." Good that we dint try to reach by match 8 pm otherwise it could have been worse...though the accident is not that bad. But then who knows."
For the rest of the journey we were pretty much quite except the address searching part. After reaching Mysore we searched the sankranti circle after circling for one hour. Left....Right...Dead End...Straight....Take left...I don’t know how many we took turns. I think Mysore was too small a city for a dude from Bangalore. May be we were taking lefts and rights after 1 km whereas the actual turns were only after 50 m. Funny part was we reached our starting point after one hour. Match was almost over by then and we saw Chennai winning against Punjab. Poor Preity couldn’t give her famous hug to any of them that night. I would have loved to just be a part of that team to get a hug. But here I was searching the Sankranti circle. But finally some luck and Prashant helped us to reach the place and have some dinner.

We reached his home and before even he could start the chat session I was off to sleep. Some dreams of PZ I believe. Some calls and missed calls and SMS ...important ones..Who cares when you are in dreams of PZ...I slept like I had never before. Oh..By the way did I forget to mention about the Car. Well it had many dents and the ploughs had done the ploughing on the car at three places. It would be around 5-6 thousand..That was our estimate. I dint know a thing about it and was worried about the money owner might take and the banging he might give.

Next day we went to one of the most sought after campus in India. They say the best in the business, a training center of Infosys at Mysore. Well I don’t know what training they give over there but I could go through the swimming pools and Pool tables Multiplex, unique architectural buildings, Some cricket, Huge Library, Basketball grounds, Tennis fields...Etc.Surprising thing was there were too many visitors like us who had come to see the campus .Soon it will start giving competition as a tourist place to Mysore Palace.


As an outsider I felt thats what infoscians are getting trained in. Living life king size. But one could sense that this was only the Cup, Coffee was elsewhere and we didn’t know how it tasted. That was a topic of discussion as well amongst, Cup or Coffee which is more important. Nothing came out ...Only like Hen or egg which came first.

Then we started off back to Bangalore, again targeting the finals of IPL. This time we left early and I decided to try my hand at the already banged car. If I hit again what’s the fuss. Not much to increase the expense. Best chance to try out my hands.

I knew what gears brakes and steering could do, so only thing I lacked was what all three together can do. Experience started off with the initial hiccups while changing gears when the car swirled and so did the heart of Rajneesh. He was on the mobile and whenever I was changing the gears, he looked as he was on hot tin. But soon the anxiety died and he calmed. After about half an hour I could drive without dude jumping and even bothering to stop talking on mobile. Soon he forget in his chat with I don’t know who that I am driving for may be first time and I also gained in confidence. But since it was my first drive I was a bit slow and we lost time.

We got the Bonnet and bumper checked and came to know about the huge expenditure that further slowed down our dude’s spirits and his speed as well. But we did reach before the finals and saw RR win and poor Chennai loose. That further dampened the spirits. Shane Warne had literally chopped RR off...of course this time it was Rajneesh Rai and not Rajasthan Royal...It was a memorable trip and yet a dampening in physical , financial and spiritual sense. I can’t say my mood was better after the journey, as the bills are yet to be settled but I enjoyed the overall stay and journey to the max.