Thursday, July 31, 2008

The 1/2/3-00 metre 'S-kid'

It was one fine evening in the famous CEPT university (famous for the canteen; more visitors to have the subsidized lunch and dinner than to see the works). As usual, i was walking along my exclusive corridor from the office to canteen for a much needed tea break. Little did i know, i will be entertained by another un 'believable' story. Light cool breeze, smell of rain still hung in the air and added to it was the flavor of tea. One could not ask for a better setting for a story.
Sitting under the tree, i joined a bunch of first yearites from the planning studio. Out of curiosity, I queried of ACP's whereabouts. It was as good as being in a quarry and hearing a hundred echos (Everyone was excited to let me on their latest story).

"ACP had an accident today". It was normal for me to hear that because he the frequency of he breaking a limb or a ligament was extremely high on a day to day basis. I was more interested in hearing the answers to 'how the incident happened'.

"ACP was on his 150 CC pulsar, on the way to gandhinagar for a meeting. So it seems that it was raining, and he was behind this S.T bus for about half an hour on the highway and the traffic was also pretty high"
(Oh! I felt for him, not because of the rain; but because he was behind that scrap of metal emitting high amount of black smoke into the air, and that too for 30 mins).
I couldnt help asking "And?? Go on...."

He continued, "Well it so seemed that at one point of time he throttled a 360 degree, overtook the bus and, 'it so seemed' that there was a bus in the other lane coming towards him. So he swerved in and had to put sudden breaks as he started to skid". He had a smug expression on his face as he completed his sentence.
I responded, "Well, thats normal considering that it was raining. And???"
All in the group were laughing at this point of time, and the suspense was killing me...!!
"And....????"

"Well, 'it so seems' that he and his bike skidded for 200 metres, and the bike wheels continued to revolve 200 times even after both of them came to a halt"
I was rather taken aback, not by what had happened but the number 200. "Are you sure??, 2oo". We all laughed and others chimed into the intriguing conversation. "We dont know that for sure, he had told me 150, and Smita here talked to him later on the phone and the number had climbed to 300". This seemed like bidding!
I asked them "And what happened to that rusty metal with 4 wheels which was behind him???"
The reply was as expected. "Eh...he said that it had dissapeared...."

In the process i sucked in the very last drop of tea from my cup and trudged back on my exclusive corridor.

Took my cellphone out, dialled ACP's number. He picked it after a few rings and the first few words were "Wadiiiii, accident ho gaya aaj".
I said , "yeah yeah...I heard all about it from Anush and the gang. How many dents??"
He sure didn't sound legible in the Hindi-Gujarati-English mixture pouting over a receding BSNL network. But i had heard the all important number "500 metres"....

The rest of the day i spent trying to imagine the half a kilometer skid on a 150 cc pulsar....
That would have been difficult for even the Wachowski brothers to replicate in a Matrix sequel.
For the rest of the day my friend 'Neo' had switched off his cell.
Life in CEPT would surely have been boring of it were not for my 'deer' friend ACP.

No comments: