I was riding the bike at a breakneck pace, without a
helmet, sans the least care in the world, with only one thought – rebellion –
directed against the whole world.
The gusts of wind that buffeted my unprotected face,
blinding me with their intensity, forcing me to squint and blowing away my hair
backward, seemed to whistle in my ears in an eerie fashion.
The stretch of asphalt in front of me, robbed of some
of its sun-baked hotness under the coolly overcast sky, went ahead, snake-like,
peppered with gentle undulations that often tried to jolt me off the seat as I
would never slow down.
I would attempt to ape the manoeuvres of
super-bikers, making the bike lean to one side, my knee almost grazing the
tarmac, then quickly straighten up again, only to lean towards the other side
with the next sharp turn in the road.
In the frenzy induced by the drug of adventure, mounting
a flyover seemed to be a conquest of the most Himalayan task in my life and as
I achieved it, I took my hands off the handle-bars, beating the air with my
fists, celebrating a facile victory.
Little did I know what awaited me as I descended – a
speeding car that appeared out of nowhere, hit my bike broadside-on with such
force that I was sent sailing over the kerb, landing in a heap amid a row of
trees, finally waking up to write this piece with a week-full of pills and
intravenous shots in my bloodstream that befuddled my brain but never doused my
creative fire.
I love the rainy background. A haven it is for rain-lovers like myself.
ReplyDeleteYes, it seems like looking at the sky through a rain-spattered windshield. I wish I could have a day like that: driving in the wilderness with thoughts of breaching the skyline, the rain beating on the glass with all the ferocity that nature can summon.
ReplyDeleteGreat story, beautifully written. But I hope it's just a story, not anything that occured in your past...
ReplyDelete"the rain beating on the glass with all the ferocity that nature can summon", wow. I believe we are more alike than we think we really are... I absolutely love nature and all its manifestations. I'm crazy in love with tempests and rays and thunder and strong wind since I was a kid. Here in Brazil we have a certain religious manifestation that slaves brought from Africa many decades ago. They say there is some kind of deity for each force of nature. In my case, I'm Yemanjá's daughter. Yemanjá is the godess of the oceans and all its changes. But I always say that Iansã (we also call her Oyá) is my godmother. Iansã is the deity of tempests, thunder and rays. Everytime that a tempest occurs here, I find myself going outside and feeling the strong wind and saying "come on, Iansã, you may pass now." I always felt wonderfully and strongly connected to nature. :-)
Thanks for the comment, Lúcia, or shall I call you Maya, or Meera?
DeleteThe personification or deity-fication (if there is such a word) of natural forces is very common amongst most cultures with Aryan roots. In India, the first major god to be worshipped by the early Aryans was Indra, the rain-god. Agni (fire-god) and Pawan (wind) were some other gods whose names are known even today.
Also, a Hindu marriage (a Gandharva marriage, i.e. with consent from both the parties) consists of ritually circling a pit of holy fire, the groom having his bride in tow, the two joined with a knot between the groom's clothes and the bride's sari. So nature-worship is still alive in some form in India.
There are analogies in Egyptian, Greek and Roman mythologies too, Zeus being the god of thunder, Poseidon of water, like that. There is another very interesting fact: the Greek God Herakles is a counterpart of the Indian god, Krishna. :)