Crash boom bang

Was returning from dinner with a friend Saturday night, when something large and wet fell on my forehead. It wasn't warm, so I didn't worry. Warm means some living thing just plopped on you. Within seconds, large drops of water were cutting though Mumbai's gathering humidity and the darkness of the night was lit by the shiny slivers of water coming down like relief supplies.

We smiled our way into an autorickshaw and I mentally ticked off a night I wouldn't be out on a motorcycle in my head. We were discussing her studies and specifically, an alternative holographic internet paradigm that got subdued by the current format in the 80s, a sort of what-could-have-been.

Our of the corner of my eye, I spotted a young couple on a Kinetic Honda. They were stopped at a break in the median, about to take a U-turn. The lady was wearing a white t-shirt and an ineffectual hand that sat upon her head in a futile attempt to save her hair-do. Her husband/boyfriend spotted an auto coming down the top lane, and decided he had just enough time to make a tight u-turn before it.

He opened the throttle and the Kinetic Honda shimmied like a scared equine and became to snake about. The auto driver hit his brakes but his wheels locked and he soundlessly glided right into the back of the serpentine KiHo. Then, the noise began. A momentary spark flew and then it was all scraping metal sounds, two screams and an engine returning calmly back to idle. As the crash disappeared from the view in my auto, I saw the woman, now trailing the KiHo, ahead of the rick, scraping-paddling along, looking very panicked, and about to discover that while she was very much alive, road rash hurt big time.

The rain, in the meantime, had stopped coming down. My shocked friend stopped on the holographic internet. I paused momentarily and I think I said, 'shit happens. Especially when you tempt it.' And continued about the glories of the Internet and what lies ahead.