What's a good deed? And what does it deserve in turn? Many since in the history of bipedals have pondered. What we deserve, from the good, bad and ugly, could have received or could be served cold. Who's to say.
Much can be lamented about the tragedies of life though. Couplets, monuments, paens, poems, songs and exclamations. They collect the angst and despair along the way by those who find resonance and propagate the same, attaching their own to this paigam.
You are right to wonder now, ki aisa kya hua Karan. Then let me.
You know how we sometimes live with our parents because our internal organs are not in pristine state to be sold and pay the rents in the right pincode.
So i was like, why not. Hot meals and a roof with familiar faces. Sign me up. Though by the weekend you build up this guilt, that's actually the same warmth and love marinating these last 5 days. You feel you need a grand gesture that assuages this. Professional milestones will come and go. The fam must jam.
Having woken up in good spirits this Sunday morning, I pick up my cycle (not literally). The plan is to get some cardio on the way to a Hot Idlis place, discovered and recommended by my squash buddy Hemang. Discovered not in the sense that it was beneath a rock, but it was next to Nerul station, that's not known for any attraction apart from tarkari at great prices.
My folks have had a fixation for South indian breakfast over the weekends ever since we got to Bombay in '94. Dad would arrive with Idlis on Sunday mornings, I'd wring my nose and wait for the Sunday mutton pulao lunch.
With two plates of Idlis and Two plates of Mendus in my hand, I cool down the steaming filter coffee by pouring it between the gleaming copper glass and copper katori. I see it happening in high speed as I write this. Take the first sip. Too sweet. And still too hot. Just perfect.
Having sud-sudao-ed the coffee, I'm ready to cycle back to the family. I put a message on my family group. It can be reproduced here but it's similar to what Hanuman felt when asked to fetch a jadibooti for the arrow laden Lakshman (or Lacchman, depending on where you dwell). One puny plant you say? Here, I give you REAL ESTATE. Ram hadnt face palmed himself up until this point. Anyway, all was well coz we are told so. For some of them at least.
With this Hanumanly spirit in my core and ultra sweetened filter coffee in my veins, my legs found a new vigor peddling. The sustenance hanging from the left handlebar, I even took on motorised vehicles. Stunted on a speedbreaker.
The soundtrack switched between Mangal Mangal (from Mangal Pandey) to Vo Sikandar hi,. Dostoonn...
I felt this lightness of being. Not unbearable at all. Was this that one deed? The good deed? Am I being absolved. My head was in the clouds. My tires, full of air, in the air. Then just like that, out of nowhere, I felt I was being overtaken. At this zenith of my being? No. Noooooo.. But who could it be?
It wasn't a who. It was a what. It was a mendu. Not one. A few. Two plates of them, will not lie to you. Rolling along side my cycle. Some idlis also lay, wobbling in the gravel. I screeched my cycle to a delicious skidd just as the last of the idlis resigned to their fate. A few mendus rolled beyond me. One stopped against my foot. I picked it up. It was still nice, warm and round. All mendu-yi. A teardrop esacped its confines. While picking up the breakfast massacre from the street and laying them on unlayed pavement stones, I shed a few more.
You've seen people walking with their cycle? Like they suddenly forgot how to ride. How they say you never forget. Never say never. Like the pigeon that only walks and hops. Forgetting it's wings. And gets runover by your car. That was me. I laid my undone breakfast parcel by the side of the road. A million eyes at the back of my neck, I walked along my cycle. My face grimy and surely tear streaked.
Another weekend shall come. Soon. And we shall be the wiser. This time using two plastic packets.
The following is a representation of how it happened.
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