Eastern Promises

Eastern Promises

Promises. Making them - quite easy, but when they come back to haunt you for action, you curse yourself why didn’t you listen carefully before agreeing.

I had been dropping people to the railway station regularly, the beautiful road, the villages and the chance to ride the bike were stimulant enough and compelled me to do it time and again, people thought it was my generosity. People can be so naïve.

On one such occasion while I was busy boasting about some of my riding achievements to a small crowd of ill-informed overworked colleagues, one future Harvard alumni  came and struck a deal with me which required me dropping him to the railway station at 5 AM in the morning. In that charged up moment when I was in full swing shaping the minds of people, I agreed to the deal without much thought.

5 AM   - A call arrived, a deep baritone voice, quite concerned, was enquiring; would we be able to leave within the next 10 minutes.

Leave!! Where to? What for? It 5 AM in the morning bro, let me sleep that’s the best part of the day, don’t ruin it, meri Shahi neend me khalal mat daalo.

“But you had promised! How shall I catch the train then, I have no options left.” Says the voice on the other end of the phone. He did have the qualities to be a business graduate.

Promises. Making them – quite easy ………. *the lines started repeating in my mind in “main samay hu” voice*

A quick glance at the bike, and the faint recollection of a youtube video where the rider reached 170 kmph on the same bike gave me strength to proceed with the endeavor.

Getting ready was easy, 3 minutes flat I gave a call back, the Harvard prospect’s voice sounded wet, marred with an occasional thunderclap. The Monsoon had decided it was time to go ahead with the scheduled rainfall. The monsoon still decided for the people of India.

The bike just went out of the picture, my dreams of setting the land speed records where shattered. So took the Sedan killer to fulfill the promises. They were ready to hop in; a certain geeky guy who was constantly amused by the things around him too joined us. The company was good, the weather electrifying and the journey looked promising. The desert state got converted into a hill station during the rains the arid vindhyas took green cover at the hint of rains and all kinds of flora and fauna sprouted from nowhere to make the atmosphere magical if not romantic.

We had a timeline to reach the destination; the accelerator pedal was being used to its limits I felt like the rally car drivers; negotiating the village roads with harmonic precision and blinding speeds.

Whenever we crossed a village all we could see where children in school uniform, blue upon whites waiting in the heavy rainfall for some kind of conveyance which could take them to their school. At our age rainy day called for skipping school altogether, but skipping school was not an option here. People back at home must have left for work, and the only hope of having lunch for them was if they could reach school on time. Boys were not to be seen .

Girls. Clutching the bunch of books against their chest, their main concern was how to reach the school, they were on tractors tailors, mini pickups, trucks, and they were everywhere.   As if they had enrolled in some leadership program and their first assignment was to reach the school; come what may.   And boy where they not succeeding. 

The ad campaign for nike “Bleed Blue” had found an entirely new definition, the atmosphere had turned blue.

In the morning when you see the streets lined with kids donning their uniforms ready to leave for school you hope that the nation is on the right path.  You hope that the promises you made to the future generation are respected.

Suddenly the rains stopped for a few moments and you could see kids criss crossing the length and breadth of the entire highway hurrying to reach their destination.

We stopped the rally car, the sedan killer for a few minutes and got down to let them pass by and enjoy the fresh morning air.

Their certainly was an east wind coming.

What it had in store was beyond our grasp , but the train was to be caught the schedules to be met , time was a scarcity, we were from a different world so we continued ahead at breathtaking speeds but were we moving ‘ahead’ was the question.