The Road Trip

A normal Saturday afternoon. Vinodbhai was here. Even though he was a “senior” in college he was one of our best friends. I and Vyshakh were browsing music videos.

“Dude, I wonder why Sid doesn’t come over often. He’s here only when there’s some occasion or so. He seldom hangs around with us, why so?” Vinod asked.

“Yeah, come to think of it, you’re right.” I said.

“Let’s call him and ask him to come over.” Vyshakh piped in.

We were super bored because our usual entertainer Thunder Ponnan aka Rahul had gone home. We stayed in a rented room in Coimbatore.

“Nope, he won’t come if we called without reason. We’ll say that I’m keeping a party at KFC. He’ll surely show up then.” Vinod said.

“Ha! You got that right. But why would you keep a party?” asked Vyshakh.

“Because I bought a flat in Trissur.” Vinod said casually and flashed a smug smile.

We carried out our sinister plan and made poor Sid to drive 10 kilometres just so we could say Hi.

Half an hour later…

“Hey dudes, Wassup?” Sid came barging through the front door.

“Nothing much.” Quipped Vyshakh.

“Nothing much?!? Nothing much?!? That’s just awesome. I drive 10kms for ‘nothing much.’ ”

“Well, we were bored and had nothing better to do and so, here you are!!”

That was me, trying to cool him down.

“What the f***??”

I get points for trying, right?

About 45 minutes of gossiping later…

“You know what, we should all go for a road trip!” Vinodbhai said.

“Yeah, how about Ooty?” Sid added.

“Nah, Ooty’s too boring. Been there dozens of times. How about Mysore?” Vyshakh said.

“But… But that’s about 200 miles away.” Said the always worried Sid.

“So what?? Just get your jacket and we’ll be on our way.” I was talking as if we were going to hang out at the neighbourhood CCD. This was a 300km ride and all we had were two bikes and almost no cash.

“Come on Sid, Be a sport!!” Vinodbhai retorted.

“Alright! Alright, I’ll just go home and get some stuff.”

“Wait up, I’ll come along. I’m almost done packing.” I jumped at the moment I heard ‘road-trip’.

“Ok, you guys pack up and meet me at the Nokia showroom near my place.” Sid requisitioned to Vyshakh and Vinodbhai.

None of us could even believe that this was happening. All of the planning took place within a time span of 10 minutes.

Another quarter of an hour later, we were below Sid’s apartment waiting for him. We saw him exiting the lift fully clad in a biker’s jacket which he had allegedly imported from the States.

And we were on our way to one of the most memorable and incidentally our first road trip as college students. Armed with nothing but a couple of bandanas, our jackets and helmets we set out on a night drive to the mystifying city of Mysore.

(This is just a preview of the fun we had at Mysore. More on the trip later.)
(P.S The photograph at the beginning of the post was taken by us en route to Brindavan Gardens.)