Down and out

And then one time, I was at my mechanic's delightfully un-motorcycle shop, talking shop. It was located in one of Delhi's urban villages. It had two dingy rooms crammed full of mobike parts, RD350s and people milling about fretting about their prides and joys.

I'd just finished an elaborate tale of a friend who got his pants caught in his bike's sidestand and toppled over midsentence and how no one present ever got over it. Especially because no one tried to. He'd get ragged about it every single time we'd be together and so forth...

Anyway, tale over, laughs still rolling, I got on my RD, flicked the sidestand up and swung the kick starter down with the vehemence that comes from a combination of 'my bike's the fastest of this lot' and 'I'm off' and a bit of 'I'm a swashbuckling hero' It tilted the RD to the right. And the ground happened to slope away from the bike right about there. There was a moment when the laughter just stopped like somebody'd hit a pause button, or taken a sledgehammer to the speakers.

And then it returned. I didn't join in.