Overdrive

I hope that no one from my family is reading this because if they get to know that I had been driving my Alto at 142 kilometres per hour, they will be scandalized, to say the least. It definitely was a scandal, as far as I, as a driver, am concerned. Having really learned driving about four months back, it was quite a stretch, by any extent of imagination, to try and literally stand on the pedal and gleefully look at the speedometer break all previous levels.

Once Aditya and I decided to while away time on a lazy Republic Day evening by going to Greater Noida and experiencing the Express Way and its much talked-about speeds, I got thinking about what my little baby could do. The frustration of not having been able to go to India Gate and watch the proceedings of Republic Day festivities live was already on my mind, but that is another story that deserves a separate paragraph so before I get into the high speed adventures of mine, let me delve a little into what could have been.

It was while coming back from a meeting with some HNI or the other that I started discussing with Rohit, a colleague, about what fun could be had if one gets the opportunity to watch live action on the 26th of Jan. Before we could even start discussing it any further, the cabbie, who was our escort for the day, butted in with a comment of his own. He promised us two VVIP passes, each one admitting three, and the confidence with which he promised the same, raised my hopes no end. He told us that he had worked for quite a number of days at the residence of Ram Bilas Paswan, the minister, and that he was quite capable of arranging two passes or even more.

Of course, what happened after he had promised that and after he had given me his number to contact him and collect the passes is anybody's guess, and that anybody would have been right. I called him so many times that I lost the very count of it and the last time I called him was from a pub in CP, in the vicinity of which, he had promised to meet me and hand over the passes to me. The fact that it did not happen, despite two rounds of snacks and drinks between JC, Dada, and myself, just added to what was going to happen the next day.

What happened the next day was of course, what I had started illustrating when I began this post. The Express way from Noida to Greater Noida, for those who are unaware, is a driver's dream and so it turned out for me. Starting off at about 100 kmph as soon as I entered the beauty of a stretch that the road was, I soon started testing what I could do. For family member(s) who haven't yet been able to kill the urge and have gone on till here, I did look at both sides of the road before pushing the pedal real hard. Initially 125 kmph seemed all that the Maruti offering could offer, but as I literally stood on the accelerator pedal, even if it was a slope, Alto LXi (3 months and 5000 kms old) managed top speed of 142 kmph.

After all the exhilaration and all the adrenaline rush, we moved on to Dilli Haat to spend the evening, planning to look at some good roadside stores and eat some good street food. However, it was not to happen as the damn place was closed because of the 26th Jan holiday. The next destination could have been NFC (New Friends' Colony for the uninitiated) but ever since I had taken Aditya and his brother there on a rather cold and bland and lonely night, Aditya has gone dead against the very idea of that place. The next mutually agreed-upon destination turned out to be the Chinese food area next to Chanakya theatre and that proved to be quite an experience, right from driving along Shanti Path, trying to find the suddenly elusive Pakistani High Commission (or Embassy, whatever it is), to having the Chinese sizzler and soup that started from smelling bad and ended at tasting surprisingly delicious.

The weekend has been a long one and as normally happens on such long and unplanned weekends, the rest of the days were not really remarkable, except, of course, a movie and some hopefully positive event at the family end, about the both of which, I will try to talk in further posts.