Music ,wind, sun and please! not to forget my wayfarer
glasses. It looked like a scene right out of ZNMD! Keeeeerrkk.. just, instead of
the sky blue Buick, picture a truck in dashing orange. And oh! Say tata to the
smooth roads of Spain and helloooo to the Indian grameen roads giving the
pot-hole ridden Mumbai roads a tough competition.
It’s peculiarly common as to how these road trips come out to
be the little lessons in life to which you look back and smile and say "Manh! Those
were the days!" . My road trip taught me a few.
1. Always carry more jeans. (avoids the shocked expression
of ma saying “did you sleep on mud?!”)
2. DO NOT drink outside water. Never. period.
3. Take the liberty of packing a first aid kit for a
regiment.(cause most of the time you turn out to be travelling with a group of ignorant hypocrites who are ninnies when it comes to health)
4. Check under the beds before leaving/checking out (it just
might turn out that you left your charger there, doesn’t really matter how it
landed there)
5. Always and always eat icecream whenever you are shivering
to the bones!
6. Kick box anyone who is around.. (well ..cause it’s fun!)
7. Not to sit beside your NSP in an overnight bus. (cause if
you droll while you sleep, chances with him/her will be down the drain
forever! )
8. Always have a dabba (dabba- old fashioned sans any fancy
OS mobs) android people are cry babies when it comes to charging!
9. DO NOT carry camera, cause believe it or not there would
be atleast one more guy who would be clicking same pics as you. So why do all
the work?
10. This is one of the biggest lessons I have learnt.
Acceptance.
Acceptance of defeat.
Of a better luck next time. That trip back to the hotel from the track was
hardest most silent one, one could have ever sat through in a otherwise noisy
group of 26. The moment of acceptance, that we had been disqualified. Of all
those long nights in sparks and dust and grease and nuts equaling to nothing.
All stories aren’t fairy tales.. i guess.. but in the end
there are always lessons to be learnt and memories to be wrapped for some far
away meeting many years from now, when you sit with a glass, preferably bottles of drinks with the
old college buddies and unwrap those discoloured boxes from the attic, to see
that the flowers you had packed were still fresh and still full of tingly pollen to make you laugh over all of it.
Cheers to a dusty luck and a clean
tomorrow! Clink !
