Bike and Life - I

( The similarity between riding to a place on bike & life.

These thoughts have occurred to me while I was driving to Ma Foi Office on the bike. A parallel to our lives can drawn from riding the bike - signals as various times in our lives when the luck favoured us or made us wait till the opportune moment, other vehicles are like other people we come across in our lives who can be nobody and also high & mighty, etc. Just as we do in life, we can go through the routine of life without learning from our day-to-day experiences or we can learn from smallest of activities that we perform in our daily chores. What I found interesting was – learnings from driving bike that can serve in other domains of our lives. I am putting them all into one place – as a series of thoughts. These are some of my observations and their inferences.)


Riding :

While I was working in Chennai, I would start from our office (in Kottivakkam) to go to Ma Foi office (near Nungabakkam High Road) for some work. The traffic would be chaotic & the heat, with every passing moment unbearable. The signals would be sometimes favourable & sometimes not. The autos & the cyclist would be a menace & the buses and trucks always trying to push you aside with their size & might, through intimidation. If I would stick to my guns they would back off but would always curse. Their curses would not bother me for I would not understand their native tongue. If you know and believe in what you are doing, whether you understand the language of the detractors or not, just don’t bother ! Stick to your guns and continue till you reach a logical conclusion !!

Initially I did not know how to navigate in this traffic of Chennai, which was of the worst kind I had ever encountered. All the people warned me that never ever pick up any squabbles with the auto rickshaw drivers for most of them had some or the other criminal record. Also most of the autos were owned by policemen or politicians. Being new and raw to the system I took the advice seriously. But to my dismay I realised that I was being pushed around a lot. That's when I thought " I'd rather live few moments of dignity that a lifetime of humiliation". It is then that I decided to act in life as it suited me - in my own way.

It was triggered off one evening when there was a big traffic jam. I was standing at a signal on my bike. One auto rickshaw guy started trying to push his way through. In order to come in the front he started pushing my bike from behind. When I asked what he was trying to do, he very rudely asked me to get my antique piece out of way. Something snapped inside me. As the traffic was on a stand still without even thinking for a moment, I got down from the bike, went up to the auto. I asked the people in the auto to get down. Surprisingly they got down without a word of protest. With the auto driver in the auto I started rocking the auto violently as if I would throw it over. The auto driver was first shocked because he did not expect a formally dressed guy to be so overtly aggressive that too physically. He suddenly changed his entire approach & started apologising profusely and pleaded me to stop. I just told him politely not to push his luck all the time. I then went back & sat on my bike. One of the people sitting on a bike next to me told me that I was mad to do a thing like that even though the auto driver was wrong. But another guy with his wife & children adjacent to him said what I did was right & these bastards deserved such treatment. How easy it is to sit by the ring side & talk about right & wrong !!!!!

But what started on that evening has grown in proportions. I now don't let anyone push me around in the traffic as a result I am happy driving without being bullied !! The same holds good for me in life too. In other words - though I value advise from others, I stand up for what I feel is right without being intimidated ! The strength comes from the Belief !!

There was a very interesting comment on drunks. Practically everything written about drunks in that comment is true….but there is an exception to that line of thought !

All types of drunks build fortresses around themselves – except one ! The ones drunk in life !! The rest of the kinds of drunk build fortresses of limitations – power, lust, et al. But life, in its truest sense, is limitless, without any boundaries. Therefore, a person drunk in life is like free air…..unbound and unfettered ! And air can reach where even sunlight can not !!

We are what we believe. With deeper introspection, we can discover our ‘real’ identity – who we ‘actually’ are and not what we are ‘living as’ in our day-to-day lives. This dawn of real identity gives a feeling of exhilaration of freedom !! To realise this sense of freedom, it is also important to realise the limitations of the physical senses. To be free - allows us to 'truly and absolutely' share our own experiences (good or bad) with everyone and 'truly and absolutely' participate in others’ experiences (good or bad). All this requires us to discipline our thinking processes. Disciplining our thinking process....lets keep if for some other day.