When my heart went vroom vroom

Cartoonstock.com

Like any another young girl, I used to find bikes and bikers incredibly hot. Not the paunchy, uncle type but the dude in unwashed jeans who zig zagged past your dad’s car. With a messenger bag slung carelessly across his chest, his muscled forearm expertly revving up his mean machine – didn’t you all follow him with puppy dog eyes, steadfastly ignoring the kid brother smirking on the seat next to yours! The hot one invariably had a cool femme clutching to him for dear life, her tresses flying silkily behind her. How many times have we tried to catch his eye as he waited impatiently at the red light crossing! I did it all the time.

Girls love fantasizing about bad boys. It’s another matter that they prefer settling down with the enfant terrible’s nerdy brother. Risk is hardly conducive to a happily ever after.

We did have a neighbour who fancied himself as a biker dude. Actually he wasn’t exactly a neighbour but G Aunty’s lover. G Aunty a loud, over dressed woman who fancied herself as Rekha’s local avatar, loved throwing parties. Not the regular parties but the type that had lots of gana, bajanaa and uncles ogling at girls shaking their booty to – jab chhaaye mera jaado koi bachh naa paye...Haaai.

Every time I walked back from the bus stop, he would be squatting and giving his machine a vigorous polish. But he was stocky, balding, kind of ugly, very-very old and sartorially challenged. When you are fourteen anyone above twenty seems ancient. Munna Bhaisahab(his universally accepted nick) walked with a swagger and even had a wife. She hardly looked like the suffering, embittered spouse. I guess she was glad to get him off her back.

But I refused to let such unsavoury memories mar my dogged devotion to the biker clan.

When I finally got a chance to ride a motorbike I was terrified. Since the chap driving it was not a boyfriend, I couldn’t even cling to him for dear life. I must have looked quite a sight, sitting ramrod straight, looking petrified. My dying to be boyfriend in college would often try to lure me for a date with the promise of a bike ride. But my brother used to call me Mother Teresa and I tried my best to live up to the title bequeathed upon me.

I did date a biker chap briefly. In fact he was my long time crush. When he finally deigned to look at me, I collapsed like a pack of stacked cards. I often hear boys complain about girls or rather the lack of them. In my opinion most of them don’t even know how to treat a girl right. Imagine sitting in a restaurant with your “Greek god”, all you can notice is the coy looks directed at him from left, centre and right - yet he has eyes for no one but you?

My Greek God now looks like a worn out gent and I can’t stop thanking my lucking stars for not having ended up with him. Getting together is easy when you have moved apart.

God always rewards good girls and look what he had in store for me - a man who was an answer to all my prayers. And what’s more he HAD A BIKE and muscled forearms! Since we were to get married in six months and I was desperate to make the most of our courtship. Unfortunately my parents’ idea of a rendezvous with my fiancé was rather unusual. The entire family would frolic together at the Baha’i temple/Mughal Gardens/some other random park. So it became my responsibility to engineer our dates. It was during this phase I discovered my innate talent for fiction. Sudden emergencies would crop up, I had to save my distressed friends, submit a form urgently and who else would come to my rescue but my Superman on his bike! And did we have fun whizzing all around the town. Me clinging to his warm back, almost throttling him with all my unspent passion... Laughing at his jokes including the unfunny ones and him keeping a straight face when I would turn up with my eyelids smudged with a violent shade of blue... At 22, my make-up sensibilities were rather awkward. What I lacked in skills, I would make up with myriad colours.
 

I was now married to a biker dude and I was on a high – is that what you think right? It’s only when I started co-habiting with one, did I realize I had a rival vying for my beloved’s attention. Every weekend he would spend inordinate hours grooming his bike. Admiring it from different angles, giving anguished cries when he discovered little scratches and when I would say it’s just a stupid bike – he would make me the unwilling recipient of his aggrieved looks. Boy! Did it make me mad! To make it worse, I couldn’t even scream at this inanimate object! So I silently put up with it and whined once in a while.

I whined louder every time I had to plonk myself on its backseat to commute. My short hair instead of swaying silkily would billow in perpendicular direction, a million acne would merrily erupt on my face and my nose would be assaulted by the traffic smells. By the time I got off from my high horse, I would be looking like a war ravaged victim from far off Bosnia. Soon I adopted an all new look to save my face – a scarf covering everything visible above my neck, an oversized shade resting on my nose bridge, a wind cheater to protect the rest of me. Why! I even had a cute pair of gloves to wear in the evenings. I was now looking like a commando out to bomb Bosnia.

As newly married we would often get invited to dinner engagements and parties. God forbid if the host decided to see us off. He had put up with agony of seeing us layering up painfully. Just as he was about to say Achha Betaa bye, out came another jacket, cap or scarf! Just like another rabbit from the magician’s hat.

My ride was no longer thrilling, it was a pain. It was either too hot, too cold, too wet for a motor bike. On long trips I would bury my face behind his back and wait for my ordeal to come to an end. My romance with the bike had come to an abrupt end. Just eight months into our marriage and I made him buy a car.

Our biking travails are now part of folklore – little nuggets we sometimes share over a cup of tea.

The other day as I was waiting at the traffic junction, I spotted a dude on his bike – scruffy, almost handsome, his bag slug carelessly; he was tapping his foot impatiently. And I giggled like a school girl, a little self consciously. But when he took off like a maniac, zipping through lanes I crinkled my nose in disdain. Show off, I muttered under my breath.

The woman took over the young girl in me and I sighed wistfully!