The form specified about the particulars of the race, the entry fee and the rules and regulations. I sent the form to the organization.
I was about to close the form when something made my eyeballs pop out of their sockets.
“Dad!”, I screamed.
“Yes Sid? Filled up the form?”,he called out from the kitchen.
“Yes Papa, but the form says that the race is about to start tomorrow and the last date is already over. How else will I race?”
My papa entered the room, his usual wrinkles on the face, showing a little too prominently this time. He limped towards me, with one hand on his left leg.
Thinking of his limp stirred my heart to a mixed bag of emotions.
The frown was evident from his eyebrows and his lips curled up to express the emotion, which spread till his
cheekbones.
He scrolled up and down a few times, amazingly quickly, seemed to take in the details.
He closed his eyes for a couple of seconds and then opened them, remarkably calm.
“Listen Sid, I have lots of experience in this, so trust me. No organizer wants to shed competitors away so I bet they would have a last look at it before they draft the racer-list for tomorrow. When they see your application, I’m sure they won’t reject a competitor who seems a clear favorite to bag the prize.”
My father, Ravishankar, was a top class motoracer in India, who carved a niche for himself. As fate would have it, he was sabotaged by his rival, Guru, during a race, paralyzing his leg, never to race again. He had enough experience in registering related stuff.
I strayed from the diversion, back to the topic.
“But Papa, Even if I’m to go for the race, I’ve not practiced in a long time. How am I to get racing from nowhere?”
“Good Night Sid. I don’t want to hear any of your excuses. Both of us know you really need the prize money. If you win this race, it is going to shoot you right to the top of the contenders for the state team. Get some sleep, rise early, fine tune your cycle, and gear up for the race.”
The last image I caught was my father’s face, showing his crystal clear teeth, as they merged with the darkness of the Saturday night.
For a second I thought Mum said all the best, but when I opened my eyes, all was dark.
Putting the dream again to the back of my mind, I let sleep engulf me, and my mind closed for the night.
It was not as pleasant as I expected the next day, when I pushed my bedcovers away and looked out of the window.
It had rained the last night. Rained hard.
I could see the puddles of water filling the places where the terrain was irregular, and the drops of water, dripping from the Neem trees on my cycle seat. The Dahlias gleamed with the morning Sun’s radiance’s help, and were showing off their petals, ridden with dew drops. My neighbor Chinnu Dada’s cock had done its job. It jolted me awake just in time.
I was now wide awake and all set to get my cycle ready. I wiped the cyclefirst, to make it dry from yesterday’s rain. I then brought a new pair of tyres, a screwdriver from the garage. I wrenched the old tyres from the rim with the screwdriver and replaced them and the tubes inside. Filled them with air, and finetuned my brakes, by changing the brake shoe, and adjusting them to avoid unnecessary contact with the tyre rims.
It was 9 am when I reached the venue. It was electrifying. All traces of the rain yesterday had been erased, and I didn’t need to think to know why.
The Ooty Terai stretch which connects Ooty and Coimbatore was the track length. It was amazingly long for an under 18 race. It was 15.2 kms long, with the merciless rocks all placed at the wrong positions, with the hairpin bends adding to my worries. All the rain water had slid down due to the slope of the hills, thanks to them.
Being one of the top racers had its own disadvantages. While I was quite sure that my sense of balance was the best in the whole of Ooty. My reflexes were horrible. This was partly why I shunned motoracing, and jumped to cycles.
Interpreting a turn while going at 200 kmph without skiiding off the track was the last thing I needed.
“Ready? 3,2,1….BANG!”
My 7 other competitors started pumping energy into their pedals and shot off ahead of me, but I knew better than to waste my energy on the first couple of miles. All I had in front of me was my Father’s face, his dead leg, and the vision of me getting the trophy.
I turned to the right, to see my father’s sabotage Guru’s son, Ranjit, smiling at me.
Guru, had got all his evidences erased and kept a clean sheet and got away with killing my father’s career. He trained his son to become one of the top racers of the state, who was as good as me, if not better. But I would never forgive him for what his father did to my dad.
“Hey Sid!” he called out.
“Keep your greeting to yourself, moron.” I said curtly as I raised my pace a little, to stay away from him.
“Hey. Cool it man. I just wanted to talk. By the way, how do you think your chances are, to win this race?”
“My chances can be kept to myself, thank you. You can as well as help your father, who could be better off sabotaging another promising racer and killing his career.”
I could see his eyes blaze for an instant with anger, but turned normal the next instant. We broke contact, as we departed.
Chintu, who was the fattest of the 8 racers, was having a 18 geared cycle. His fascination with the gears was never ending, as he rolled his stubby fingers over the knob that shifted gears. He was rich enough to take this race as a
hobby, but I wasn’t.
I caught up with Chintu after 4 to 5 kms, to see him puffing out short but exhausted bursts of air. I still continued with my normal pace, to inch past him slowly, but surely. I started to talk with him, when I heard the worst sound, which was every cyclist’s nightmare.
My wall tube was leaking air, and was leaking fast. Anychange in pace, would mean a flat tyre, which summed up to losing the race. I thanked God for my gift of balance, as I hunched myself towards the front and put negligible force on the rear.
But what surprised me was the fact that a tyre so new, had busted so early. Concentrating on my balance, I pedaled on.
There were the stray dogs en route, who kept barking at all the spectators lined in the border of the road, to witness the race. The Tea shops were filled with the local people, who had their huts on the hills, and cut trees for a living. Men with newspapers and women with sieves, to separate the husk from the grains, sat on both sides of the track, spectating the race.
Rashid, the mayor’s son was tall, well built and was known for his infinite stamina and strength, from the blackened eyes of the many boys in school. The cool air knocking the doors of my mind, pleaded to let concentration out of the doors. Restricting it, I let my mind do something else other than getting distracted by the beauty of nature and losing my pace.
I started doing things like counting the number of times, Ranjit overtook me, the number of times I used the brakes, the number of hairpin bends and the miles to go for the finish line. Atleast these things distracted me to a lesser extent.
I sped across a racer, when I saw a strange sight. Chintu, who was known for maintaining his cycle impeccably, was standing on the road, with a flat tyre.
My mind started wandering. How could have that happened to two racers? It was so not in Chintu’s way to get THAT problem. How come 2 on 8?
I was racking my brains over this, and failed to notice a turn coming on my way.
“Siddarth! Keep your eyes on the road! TURN!!”, said an achingly famililar voice.
I swerved the handle bar to miss the rock by a whisker. The fact that the voice was aching was that, it made me embarrassed to think that Ranjit actually helped me, stay put on track.
The order of racers were turned upside down in the last few kms, with me and Ranjit leading the pack of racers, the others exhausted from their early bursts of energy. Chintu had quit the race, thanks to his flat tyre, but that still confused me.
I could see the finish line, coming towards me, from a turn in the horizon, as I locked my eyes on the Dead-Man’s Curve which was the toughest turn. All the rain water, swept away, had clogged the pit and made it very very damp.
A sharp whistle ripped the air, as I turned to see Rashid with a spike on his hand.
Several things happened at once.
Rashid’s hand reached for my tyre, I suddenly lost control, My cycle was hurtling towards a jagged rock in the perfect centre of the turning arc, and I was dashing down from the 150 m altitude, to the unfriendly teak trees, which were racing towards me.
I could hear Ranjit’s voice from the background, before all went dark.
When I opened, I could see how lucky I had been. I had fallen on a platform, directly under the turn, which actually was the sole reason of my existence right then.
I recogonised the place instantly. It was Ranjit’s father’s cycle factory, that manufactured all kinds of parts, from bells, to the carriers. Near the entrance were the piles of tyres and wall tubes kept for sales. On the box was written,
I was shocked beyond measure when I saw the tyres.
Tyres, which were perforated very subtly but at the main places, and wall tubes with a microscopically inscised cut, were stacked in piles. First I was sure that they were meant to be discarded, but the shock slapped me once again when I saw the approval sign to be sent to the market.
Then it hit me. Realisation and Pain hit me simultaneously. I had my palm, dug into a broken piece of scrap and the wave of nausea that swept over me, but I still tried reasoning things out.
My back tyre had popped because the wall tube must have been defective. I was sure that It was the same brand of tyres because the memory of changing the tires this morning still seemed too clear to forget. That took care of Chintu’s problem. And as for the front, well, Rashid took care of that.
And as for Rashid, there were two possibilities. Either he didn’t want me to win the race, or he was hired by someone who didn’t want me to.
My mind, satisfied with the spell of reasoning, succumbed to the physical strain on my palm, and I blacked out.
When I came to, I was at the finish line, my dad near me, along with Ranjit whose face burned with emotions I couldn’t classify properly. The first event that happened, was when the Mayor hit Rashid.
“How dare you! To think that my son would stoop so low…”, his voice trailed off.
The Mayor apologized to me for Rashid’s behavior but the sight ahead of me was even more shocking as Mr.Guru was handcuffed by the Sergeant, and was being led away, when he met his son, Ranjit.
Ranjit’s eyes burned with shame, filling them with tears of regret and agony.
“Ranjit, I’m sorry to have hired Rashid to bust Siddarth’s tyres, but the probability of you coming second was too much for me to bear. I’m sure I can expla…..”, but Ranjit cut him short.
“Mr. Guru.”
“The gift that you have been giving the people of Ooty can never be forgiven by others, let alone me. Your foolish and the inhuman partiality towards urban areas, by selling the genuine goods to the metros, is the lowest level that can be thought of stooping to. Now I know why Sid was angry with me. Though I don’t have proof, I’m now convinced that it was YOU who destroyed Mr. Nitin Jain’s career. Shame on you dad.”
“As for your sentence, I don’t think it would be any less than a seven year term, for manufacturing defective products. By the time you come out, I would be a major, free to do what I want. So I order you not to come seeking me and I never wish to see you again.”
I was spectating this scene with awe. Ranjit didn’t need to explain anything to me as he was innocent. Rashid had been paid by Mr. Guru to sabotage me, like how he did to my father. Little did I know that my fall from the hill would cost my left thumb, leaving it immobile and inflexible for the rest of my life.
I could have taken the loss to my heart and have targeted Ranjit for it. But I realized it was never his fault anytime.I also realized I had found a new friend.
There were the crossroads in front of me, where one flank led to the police station and the plank perpendicular to it, lead to my house. I watched the painful separation of father and son, but my mind couldn’t force itself to feel a dint of pity for Guru. He had deserved this.
But what about Ranjit? I realized I could talk this out with him later.
But my hand stopped my mind from thinking, as it shot a wave of pain through my body.
My body winced with pain, as my heart whined with regret for Ranjit’s separation. My mind roared with remorse and eyes, with tears, for having used a defective balance to weigh Ranjit’s character.
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