What's a Dare got to do with it?

back story of doing something crazy-"apna time aayega"

We have all done crazy things. Many of our life lessons come from our craziness. This story is about one such event in my life, which led to a long romance with cycling. It also left me with many life lessons about resilience & overcoming fear. Many years ago, in the mid-1980s, two friends and I cycled across India’s western coast from Mumbai to Kanyakumari. It was a crazy, fun-filled trip that set up my adventurous streak, which I carried with me in my corporate & eventually my entrepreneurial life. It also led me to cycle across the Himalayas, but more on that another day!

Anyone who starts a company must have a bit of madness! I learned that sometimes, we stop ourselves from being audacious. This expedition reminded me of not thinking about limits. Life is beautiful when you don’t let constraints imprison your imagination! Can this be taught? I don’t know, but it can be learned! After this expedition, I have constantly reminded myself to honor this madness in myself!

Here is the back story!

Apna time aayega

It was that famous small cup with some liquid, “cutting chai,” in Mumbai lingo. We sprawled across a few chairs in the college canteen as a group. Tall, gangly 20-somethings—most were guys; it was an engineering college, damn it! The canteen was an odd ballroom with broken furniture, and most people were hanging around just doing nothing. The smell of vada pav and misal was in my nostrils as I saw my gang devouring every morsel of food that came our way. Hunger seemed to know no bounds in those days; it was all kinds of hunger. And you know it hasn’t changed even now, 40 years later? After 35 excruciating days of war with the educational system, we had just finished our exams. A celebration was due, and a few of us had made a bonfire of the handwritten notes, probably trying to cremate that one particular course that had hounded us through the year. Everyone around that table wanted a girlfriend; no one had the privilege. And here was Susmit, showing off his plans; none of us believed them, yet we were madly jealous. Susmit had a girlfriend in south Mumbai studying at St. Xavier’s, and he constantly showed us his mad-hatter ways of impressing her. He was ruthless with me; possibly, our male hormones competed. Now he said,” Music say hi bat banti hai, mere pass teen casette hain, patao 1, 2, and 3. Rock, jazz, and old hindi”. He took a tape from his pocket (we listened to music on tapes then), proudly thrust it under my nose, and said, “Patao 1 ki guarantee hai, tujhe bhi girlfriend milegi,” and thrust the tape under my nose.

That was enough; the frustration boiled over! The hostel was a 10-minute ride away on a bicycle, and we constantly borrowed each other’s cycles to move around. Unable to bear it, I called Sanket, “Boss cycle de, mein ghoom ke aata hoon.” Not being able to stand the fact that I had no girlfriend, I wanted to vent my hormones by cycling away in a huff.

Susmit looked at me and said, “Mere pass to girlfriend hai, tere pais kya hai, cycle.” He guffawed and almost rolled over laughing. Then he added, “Kahan tak jaoge o thakur, is khatara pe.”

And mindlessly, I said, “Kanyakumari, tu aayega.” It was a dare, told with the power of the same male hormones that were competing with Susmit over the girlfriend. And Susmit responded, “Abe kabhi nahin kar payega, chup chaap hostel ja.”.

And five days from then, I had two friends as excited as I was about cycling down to Kanyakumari, a distance of only 1800 km. We left on the mission on the 10th day of that hormone-laden response. And we cycled to Kanyakumari in 18 days, sleeping in temples, schools, and even an orphanage. One particularly late night, deep in the Konkan, when all right-thinking people had slept, we found ourselves pedaling through a nasty mountain road called Bhoste Ghat. My friends cursed me, but I gritted it out, and finally, we all made it. “Limits are meant to be broken, crossed, or challenged.” That was when my identity found another strand. Strand by strand, life went on, and for the foreseeable future, girlfriends didn’t happen until they suddenly did.

I wrote the story in this post as a part of the wonderful writing workshop run by Natasha Badhwar & Raju Tai.

https://substack.com/@natashabadhwar  and raju tai. 

And the title “Apna time aayega” was Natasha’s suggestion. https://natashabadhwar.substack.com/s/ochre-sky-stories