Crazies on highways

I went further and further into the bushes looking for the perfect spot to deify the ground with ammonia and urea. The spot had to be far enough away from the prying eyes of the passengers seated on the window side of the bus.

Having been blessed by the sudden insight that all the peeping Toms had thought to carry night vision glasses, to be able to catch the exquisite posteriors that I imagined we were privileged to possess, I guided my friends further away from the road. 

Finally finding a spot that suited all our various requirements: far away, clear ground, and no creepy crawlies that we could see, we breathed a contented sigh and let lose the pressure that had built up.

The interesting thing about the urge to pee is that just the suggestion of it is enough to make you feel a desperate need to yield to it. Add to it, the nightmare of traveling in a bus that halts only in the shadiest of bus stands. 

Someone, I don't know who, requested the bus driver to halt and a bunch of us gladly took the opportunity to stretch our legs and unload the bladder. 

We had barely even finished when the bus took off- just like that, no toot- toot. Not even a goodbye, see you next time. Talk of impolite!

We ran after the bus, pulling up our pants, shouting, waving our fists and still none of the passengers with the night vision goggles could see us- or maybe it was payback time.

Finally, we just stopped running and the four of us started laughing. It was ludicrous. We were stuck on the middle of the highway from Goa to Bangalore with our clothes barely on, our purses and phones back in the bus along with our close friends who had either not noticed our absence or more likely were urging the bus driver to speed up. We should have been worried, four girls alone on a deserted dark road, with neither a phone nor a penny, but all we could do was double over in laughter. 

As it is, this Goa trip had been one of those iconic ones. Fifteen odd (and when I say odd, I do mean odd) youngsters without any room reservations just landed there, banded together in groups in different rooms, and just randomly spent our time laughing, eating, with some (guys in our group) getting chased by older, amorous women to the huge merriment of everyone else.

Oh! The madness of youth. Neither daunted, nor by fear haunted, we just started walking along the path taken by the bus. 

I wish I could say, the tale had a more adventurous ending, but one of our gang finally did urge the driver to stop and we finally caught up with the bus which halted a kilometer away. 

Have you read of that extremely entertaining buttered cat paradox? The basic premise in that is that a cat has the buttered side of the bread tied to its back. If this cat is now thrown from a height- since a cat always lands on its legs and toast always falls buttered side down, it forms a never-ending loop. When it falls buttered toast down, the cat will upright itself to fall on its legs and the buttered toast will overturn the cat to have the privilege of kissing the floor and so on ad infinitum till finally the cat and toast hover in a possible anti-gravity position. 

I do think I have the nine lives of a cat (And I do love toast, so there are endless possibilities here). 

One fateful evening, the battered half was driving us back from a cousin's wedding in Mangalore on a dreary, rainy day. It was almost dusk or as my mother famously says "When the cows come home." We were still about 2.5 hours away from Bangalore and were discussing turbo engines or maybe disc brakes or probably the stock market. I'm cool like that. I'm interested in all that kind of stuff. No really. I wasn't trying to keep the spouse awake by engaging him in automobile jargon or financial planning to get him excited. That's just the story I tell others so that they don't catch on to my coolness quotient. I'm modest that way!

Well anyway, we were probably discussing something earth-shattering, when the elder (in those days only) child woke up and started crying in his baby seat. We stopped the car and I moved to the rear seat to give the young dude company. We had hardly gone five minutes more when a loud sound shattered my eardrums and the car which had been whizzing at about 100 Kms per hour skidded to a halt. Heart beating thunderously, I stared wild-eyed and horror-struck at the windscreen which had shattered and cracked all over. A large rock had been hurled from the slightly raised embankment of the highway and at the speed, we were traveling at, it hit the car like a bullet right where I was seated not five minutes before. I had just had a narrow escape.

The intention had been to rob us and if we had been murdered, I guess that was a small price. Luckily our assailant(s) had not trusted their aim and had struck two vehicles, a truck in front of us with four strapping young men and our vehicle comprising of two adults and one child. I'm convinced they got scared by my little one. They got worried they would be stuck with him (I don't blame them) and so they took off and we didn't get robbed. 

I did tell you I have the nine lives of a cat. I have finished two of mine on the highways of our country, I still have seven more. That is the reason I have the gumption to live my life the way that I do.