The abode.
Top right is where the bed is.
Bottom left is where sleeping happens.
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Showing posts with label pics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pics. Show all posts
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Friday, February 23, 2007
…. and where there’s a highway, what’s a little bloodshed here and there, eh?
Twas a dark and stormy night. Okay, not really stormy. One half of the National Highway 4 was barricaded for repairs. No warning boards. An area of darkness. You hear yourself crash much before you manage to see anything blocking the road.
At 75 kilometres an hour, the only sound you hear is of the metal slamming into asphalt. Of mud and gravel ripping through your clothing, of sand tearing into your skin and fusing into a mishmash of blood and flesh and earth and mud and pebbles, as you’re dragged along by the collapsing steed. That’s a lot of sounds, eh?
Poop. It doesn’t feel all that dreadful as you’re conditioned to believe – my knee and heel and everything in between all have a sharp tang emanating from them - but it’s more like irritation than agony. My perception is much heightened; I can sense more acutely the minutest sensation in my lacerated arms and legs – it’s a combination of a gazillion crawls, each different from the other. The ankle feels wet from blood trickling down it – it’s a bit of a change from the dry dirt that’s been stirred and mashed into my flesh these last few seconds; it also reminds me rather abruptly that my throat is parched.
I turn the key, and sit down on the road. I decide the nonchalant dude act is in order – nonchalant dude picks up bike, drives home, washes wounds, and doesn’t think about it afterwards. Aaaah, it’s a *little* tough bending my knee. Or for that matter lifting the bike. Or walking. Pfoo – I drag self from underneath bike, wobble towards the streetlight, recline on the divider, and stretch legs.
For the first time, I see my arms and legs. Aaaaaargh! How the hell am I going to clean all that up? There’s mud a mile deep into my flesh, all along the enormous openings in my skin, there’s red everywhere, lightened occasionally wherever the earth has pitched in, and garnished where the pebbles have volunteered. Aaaah – someone’s going to have to rub the wound a million times to get all that mud out of it.
I decide I’ll not think about it. On an impulse shut my eyes to try and do nothing but feel, sense as fully, as completely as I can the itch, the burn, the bristle in my arms and feet. Aaaah.
Gentle reader, you’re perhaps wondering if I haven’t heard of hospitals or doctors that I had decided to sit down in the midst of highways and bleed on to glory. I must point to the fact that it was a half past eleven, and so the only alternative to being nonchalant dude was to wait for reinforcements.
In due time, a solitary auto showed up. Chap picked up the helmet that had flown off my head on impact, the cell which had decided to do a triple jump from my pocket, and of course, parked the bike, which had dragged me along after having completed the formality of getting its face smashed in.
“Nah, don’t hold me, I’ll walk inside”, saith I once we reach the hosp. Aaah dammit, I haven’t the strength to speak – my vocal chords are stretched, and yet hardly a whisper emanates. Three staggering steps, as the auto guy apprehensively looked on, before he rushed to hold me. “Get a goddamn wheelchair”, I could’ve been screaming, but every word could only struggle out of my lips.
Aaaah man, I plopped into the wheelchair, it hit me as to how completely physically deflated I was. A while ago, it was almost as if no amount of bloodletting would do anything to me, and now, ah, I was so devoid of energy, or for that matter the will or the life to be able to do anything - the only resolve I seemed capable of making was to determine to do nothing, and let people take care.
Got hauled into a ward, it took a while to get all the mud cleaned – it was a strange sensation finally seeing the expanse of blood and flesh all by themselves; free of all the earth that I thought would never get away from it.
Pah – still cant speak- water please! No avail, I’m talking in hoarse whispers. Could I at least write my name? My right wrist isn’t going to jump at the idea, thank you very much. The doc let it pass.
‘Trauma’, wrote the doc, in large friendly letters. Gaah, trauma it seems – I contemplated a protest at being described thus, before surrendering to the superior, yet sweet forces of sheer fatigue that quietly embraced me.
**
Tis Immutable law time again!
One: The day you desist from wearing your jacket and shoes is the day you crash.
Two: Your insurance policy always expires two days before you crash.
Three: Time wounds all heels.
**
One does, however, look at the brighter side, which in this case was that one was compelled one to pick four wheels instead of two, which, you will admit, has its merits.
**
Twas a dark and stormy night. Okay, not really stormy. One half of the National Highway 4 was barricaded for repairs. No warning boards. An area of darkness. You hear yourself crash much before you manage to see anything blocking the road.
At 75 kilometres an hour, the only sound you hear is of the metal slamming into asphalt. Of mud and gravel ripping through your clothing, of sand tearing into your skin and fusing into a mishmash of blood and flesh and earth and mud and pebbles, as you’re dragged along by the collapsing steed. That’s a lot of sounds, eh?
Poop. It doesn’t feel all that dreadful as you’re conditioned to believe – my knee and heel and everything in between all have a sharp tang emanating from them - but it’s more like irritation than agony. My perception is much heightened; I can sense more acutely the minutest sensation in my lacerated arms and legs – it’s a combination of a gazillion crawls, each different from the other. The ankle feels wet from blood trickling down it – it’s a bit of a change from the dry dirt that’s been stirred and mashed into my flesh these last few seconds; it also reminds me rather abruptly that my throat is parched.
I turn the key, and sit down on the road. I decide the nonchalant dude act is in order – nonchalant dude picks up bike, drives home, washes wounds, and doesn’t think about it afterwards. Aaaah, it’s a *little* tough bending my knee. Or for that matter lifting the bike. Or walking. Pfoo – I drag self from underneath bike, wobble towards the streetlight, recline on the divider, and stretch legs.
For the first time, I see my arms and legs. Aaaaaargh! How the hell am I going to clean all that up? There’s mud a mile deep into my flesh, all along the enormous openings in my skin, there’s red everywhere, lightened occasionally wherever the earth has pitched in, and garnished where the pebbles have volunteered. Aaaah – someone’s going to have to rub the wound a million times to get all that mud out of it.
I decide I’ll not think about it. On an impulse shut my eyes to try and do nothing but feel, sense as fully, as completely as I can the itch, the burn, the bristle in my arms and feet. Aaaah.
Gentle reader, you’re perhaps wondering if I haven’t heard of hospitals or doctors that I had decided to sit down in the midst of highways and bleed on to glory. I must point to the fact that it was a half past eleven, and so the only alternative to being nonchalant dude was to wait for reinforcements.
In due time, a solitary auto showed up. Chap picked up the helmet that had flown off my head on impact, the cell which had decided to do a triple jump from my pocket, and of course, parked the bike, which had dragged me along after having completed the formality of getting its face smashed in.
“Nah, don’t hold me, I’ll walk inside”, saith I once we reach the hosp. Aaah dammit, I haven’t the strength to speak – my vocal chords are stretched, and yet hardly a whisper emanates. Three staggering steps, as the auto guy apprehensively looked on, before he rushed to hold me. “Get a goddamn wheelchair”, I could’ve been screaming, but every word could only struggle out of my lips.
Aaaah man, I plopped into the wheelchair, it hit me as to how completely physically deflated I was. A while ago, it was almost as if no amount of bloodletting would do anything to me, and now, ah, I was so devoid of energy, or for that matter the will or the life to be able to do anything - the only resolve I seemed capable of making was to determine to do nothing, and let people take care.
Got hauled into a ward, it took a while to get all the mud cleaned – it was a strange sensation finally seeing the expanse of blood and flesh all by themselves; free of all the earth that I thought would never get away from it.
Pah – still cant speak- water please! No avail, I’m talking in hoarse whispers. Could I at least write my name? My right wrist isn’t going to jump at the idea, thank you very much. The doc let it pass.
‘Trauma’, wrote the doc, in large friendly letters. Gaah, trauma it seems – I contemplated a protest at being described thus, before surrendering to the superior, yet sweet forces of sheer fatigue that quietly embraced me.
**
Tis Immutable law time again!
One: The day you desist from wearing your jacket and shoes is the day you crash.
Two: Your insurance policy always expires two days before you crash.
Three: Time wounds all heels.
**
One does, however, look at the brighter side, which in this case was that one was compelled one to pick four wheels instead of two, which, you will admit, has its merits.
**
Light at the end of the tunnel?
Monday, January 15, 2007
Monday, May 15, 2006
Station-ed in the metropolis....
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Woah, what I would give to get to work from an office like this one... Envy of them Central Railways employees engulfs me... It is, of course, not all peace and tranquility and Brit raj charm - indeed, before you can say Shree Shree Shree Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj terminus, a gazillion people will have passed through this place... Which isnt too big a price to pay anyway...
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*Consult nearest Ban-ga-lora-ean for precise definition.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Thoughts of trains....
While waiting for the last local back home at a half past eleven. Having a not-so-great cam does have its advantages - you get dreamy, wispy, stud images that look right out of an Edward Hopper painting.
From a local train door, earlier in the day. The places perhaps will never be written about. Suffice to say they're approximately 42km from home.
From a local train door, earlier in the day. The places perhaps will never be written about. Suffice to say they're approximately 42km from home.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Portraits of the driver as a young man - I.
A steed. A maze of untouched, unexplored highways stretching away, inviting you to wade through every one of them, to go on through enormity after enormity of nothingness. There may be temptations that can be resisted, but this definitely isnt one of them. A new cam meant some portions of this ride across nowhere were recorded, at least to the extent that the not-particularly-great resolution of the cam permitted. Here be those sets-of-thousand-words.
That table on which the glass is, it's sub-lime, aint it?
We've come a long way, baby.
Reflections on protective gear. 
Some 42km outside town, minutes before sundown, when torn between rushing to town before dark and imbibing some of the Best Sugarcane Juice in The World(TM). Said juice was drunk, darkness caused no harm to befall the driver, since city lights began a short distance after. Said driver did, however, end up with a headache due to the city traffic, whose slow-start-stop jams dont quite drive you ecstatic. Not after a no-worry highway cruise.
Portraits of the driver as a young man - II.
Sunsets and sunrises are the among the most common motifs in art and aesthetics, yet they never bore you or cease to hold your imagination. Out in the open, on a highway in the middle of nowhere, watching a sunset all by yourself makes it a first hand, close up experience, much like riding across nowheres, that makes you feel closer to, in proximity with nature, with the sunset.
Sunflowers! Bad photo, but REAL sunflowers! Not on TV or in a tourist album, not even a fleeting glimpse through a speeding bus or train, but field after field of glaring yellow running away to infinity - right here, right now, right around me. I hopped off the highway, parked on the side road that coursed through the midst of these fields, sat down upon a the edge of a little bridge. Their calm was infectious. It helped that it was late morning, and that I'd been driving since sun-up and so was in need of a break, so much time could be spent here.
This was another of the times when I wished I had a much better camera. This was a swampy stretch that I viewed from the ledge of a cliff outside Hospet on NH13. I parked upon the stones on the roadside, regretting as one does on such occasions - that things like these, those that we love the most are those that we cannot stay forever with. Some half an hour was all that could be devoted, for sundown, alas, approached, and a town had to be gotten to before dark, before the killer trucks would begin to go on the attack. 
Portraits of the driver as a young man - III.
The Re-loins stations. Very neat, very well kept, amazingly spacious and comfortable - with hygienically prepared horrid tasting food - it tasted equally bad in the couple of stations I went to across three states. The perfect places to stop over and take a nap, after you've had lunch elsewhere.
Eh? Why should I give a caption for every pic?
That's un-burn.
The phantom steed.
Still life with unkempt hair.
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