Summer vacations were times of great fun. It was the time to make endless plans, try out new things and see new places. This memorable day dates back to the summer just after I had finished my 11th standard. My friend, Raghu, and I had great plans for the vacation, and were eagerly looking forward for the holidays to put our plans into action. But of all the plans, there was one that we were really excited about. We got goose bumps whenever we thought about it, and a chill ran down our spine every time we thought of consequences if our parents came to know.
“Dear God, please make me a pilot”
“Please also get my parents to gift me a Kinetic Honda”
“Also, is there any chance that you can get Ms. Cutie on the second bench to have a crush on me? Pleeeease?”
“God, if you think I am being unreasonable on the third one, just fulfill the first two and I’ll take care of the third myself. Thank you in advance, dear God”
That was my standard wish list to the almighty every day. I was among the unfortunate few who stayed so close to my school that if my teacher shouted “Arundeep!!!” a little extra hard, my mom would pop up in school the next minute asking; “What did you do now?” This uncomfortable proximity ensured that my parents never felt the need to provide me with any conventional modes of conveyance to go to school. My dad used to drop me in the morning and I would walk back home in the evening. This was very irritating, considering the fact that my friends who came to school in their two wheelers were the subject of envious looks from all quarters, including Ms.Cutie’s.
While none of my friends were ‘legally’ allowed to ride two wheelers, cops took a lenient view of students riding automatic scooterettes. For those who are not familiar with that term, scooterettes are those puny underpowered two wheelers that manufactures try and sell in the garb of ‘unbelievable mileage’. If you ask me, I wouldn’t want to be caught dead in one, forget be seen riding one. My radio controlled toy car could go faster that one of those things. Scooterettes were for the boys. Men rode Kinetic Hondas. It was faster, more stylish and the ‘Ferrari’ of automatic two wheelers at that time. Needless to say, parents of most boys my age had nightmares of a big black Kinetic Honda zooming into them and whisking away their precious kids. And since it was not a scooterette, they took solace in the arms of the law for keeping their kids’s pleas at bay.
Our plan was simple and foolproof, or so we thought. We were in the middle of our summer vacation were parents were a bit lenient about where you were the whole day; a common friend’s elder sister had a Kinetic Honda; she was going out of town for a week; there was a nice beach about 10 kilometers from our place; and Raghu’s home did not have a phone. If i could ask for a better coincidence of events, I would have asked to find my board exam question papers in my letter box three months before the exam. So, we finalized the date, told our parents that we would be in each other’s homes and arranged with the common friend to pick up the scooter in the morning and drop it back by evening. I would ride on the way to the beach and Raghu would ride on the way back. We were so thrilled and couldn’t wait for that day to come.
The day arrived. We met at a common place and proceeded to the common friend’s house to pick the scooter. We couldn’t stop giggling and feeling excited the whole while. The anticipation of enjoying the feeling of wind in your hair, overtaking minions on crawling scooterettes and having a ball of a time was getting into our head. We reached his place and he opened the door:
“Hey dudes, nice to see you guys here, what a pleasant surprise?”
“Surprise??? Dude, we came to pick up the Kinetic Honda and go to the beach, remember?”
“Oh shucks man. I completely forgot about and dad took that to office today”
“What the !@#$? Didn’t we tell you well in advance of the plan? You’d agreed to keep it ready for us you !@#&^% @#$ !@# *&^%$ )(*&^@#$%^&*()!!!”
“Chill guys, I am really sorry. It completely skipped off my mind. Wait, let me think. Maybe I can help you guys. I have another spare two wheeler which dad otherwise uses. Would you care for that?”
“Which one is it?”
“A Bajaj Sunny”
If it was a Bollywood movie, right now was the time for the earth to shake, the sky to go dark, the lighting to come crashing down and the hero to say “Naheeeeeeeeee! Keh do ki yeh jhoot hai! Keh do ki yeh sab ek sapna hai! Keh do ki tum mazak kar rahe ho!”
“Are you kidding us? A Sunny? Why don’t we take a tricycle, we’ll still have some respect left! Come on man!”
“I am really sorry guys, but what can I do now?”
This was the moment of truth. We couldn’t go back home since we had told that we would be out for the whole day and coming back early would raise eyebrows. We didn’t have enough money to wander about the whole day pointlessly and there were no malls at that time. Both of us sat down on the stairs in front of the house with our face in our hands, only looking up to see that bright red Sunny in the garage. It almost felt as if it was mocking us. This was just not happening!
We looked at the Sunny, looked at each other and shook our heads left to right in unison. After some time we looked at the watch, looked at the Sunny and looked at each other.
“Give us the keys”
I kicked the starter pedal once. Nothing. I kicked it again and it made a sound similar to how human’s gargle. I kicked it a third time and it roared to life, literally. I revved the accelerator and the whole thing shook like a leaf in the wind but made so much noise that would have put a Ferrari to shame.
“You sure this is going to take us to the beach and back in one piece?”
“Why not man? My dad uses it everyday”
“Well yeah, considering he’s in the Air Force, he must be using this to race the fighters!”
“Come on man, it’s not so bad. Go ahead, have fun. I’ll see you guys in the evening”
“Ok Raghu, hop on. Let’s hope this turns out to be a slightly less embarrassing experience than I expect it to be”
Wikipedia describes Sunny as a 60cc scooterette, with a 3.5 litre fuel tank capacity, capable of carrying a ‘payload’ (it must be a sick joke to use the term which is generally used in the context of satellite launch vehicles and missiles) of upto 120kg and can achieve a maximum speed of – hold your breath – 50kmph! While I was very lightly built, Raghu more than made up for it by being the hunk that he was. Between us, we were precariously close to the maximum prescribed ‘payload’ of the Sunny. Five minutes into the ride we realized that the only way this thing was ever going to achieve its maximum speed was if we lifted it and threw it. The accelerator was twisted to its maximum point and far from how a Kinetic Honda would have behaved under the circumstances, we were covering centimeters, not kilometers, per hour.
Science says light travels faster than sound which enables you to see before you hear. We proved this wrong. The sound of our Sunny preceded us at every twist and turn where we found people waiting in anticipation and craning their necks to see what was coming. The only things that we overtook were electricity poles and coconut trees. After what seemed like an eternity, god heard our prayers and we came to a downward slope where I believe we managed to reach near about the maximum speed of the Sunny, but our happiness was short lived. As in life, the downward slope was followed by an upward climb and this is where our embarrassment peaked. We climbed 1/4th of the steep with the momentum we had gained from coming down the slope, but quickly and steadily the speed dropped and pretty soon we were two dumbos sitting in an inclined position on a stationary two wheeler which was just making noise and emitting smoke. If it had not been a friend’s scooterette, we would have dumped it then and there and made our way back on foot, but we had to take it back, so we pushed. Many such twists, turns and climbs later, we reached the beach with strained muscles, bruised egos and our self esteem scarred for life.
What, with walking with the Sunny most of the way, we reached the beach well beyond our planned time. We didn’t have time for anything else that we planned since we knew that the return journey was going to be equally arduous and time consuming. We gobbled some lunch, drank a bottle of soft drink each and set out on our journey back home.
The journey back home turned out to be much more pleasant because we knew what was in store. We anticipated where the Sunny would give up and we would have to push and where we could roll it down a slope and feel the wind in our hair. We had animated races with people on bicycles, chickens, and stray dogs trotting beside us. Invariably, most of them managed to beat us, but it didn’t seem so bad now, in fact, we were enjoying it. By the time we reached our destination we were exhausted and just longed to take a shower and crash out.
“Oh, hi guys. How was the trip? Hope you had fun. Sorry I couldn’t join you”
Raghu could kill him by doing pretty much nothing more than just sitting on him, but we couldn’t that to our friend.
“Dude, don’t ever, ever, give out this piece of junk to even your enemies. Even they deserve better”
“Why? What happened? Didn’t it take you to the beach?”
“No, we took it to the beach. It didn’t want to come”
We left him with the keys and a perplexed look on his face.
Raghu and myself parted ways towards our homes soon after and when I reached home, my mom asked:
“I was worried when you got late. What happened? Did you not get an auto back from Raghu’s place?”
“No Ma, I took a lift from an uncle on a Sunny. Interesting ride it was”
“Hmm, I heard from Sheela aunty that it’s a safe ‘bike’ and it’s way cheaper than a Kinetic Honda. I was thinking I’ll get you one” !!!
“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!”
