when you dare to choose...

Now this ones a killer...!! Its already been a fortnight since this event passed but its something ones gotta hear! I dunno what to refer to it as, escaping death (but that sounds way to heavy!), the day when nothing could go wrong (then I should have definitely seized the moment and asked her out!) or the fateful day when Almighty finally presented some insinuation, a strange one at that, but he seemed to be telling me, "mate you're wasting your time as an engineer, you have gotta run!" I cant really tell if that was by any chance some kind of joke he was pulling off on me, but he seemed pretty persistent! After all, as you shall (if you manage to read till the end) duly find out, it is not every ones cup of tea to keep running at around 20 odd Kmph in order to stop from falling off! And it is not, indeed, any ones cup of tea to be able to pull that stunt off in the middle of the road and manage to have attention of most of the living creatures in a diameter of a 500 meter radius completely on you!

Now, hoping that I did manage to catch some of your attention, I shall begin with the main story. This was during one of my final days at the internship and one of the happiest since i managed to get an authentic letter affirming that I had put in some precious days of my life in being trained in some exceptionally important things in the industry. ( I figured mentioning these exceptionally important things would on one side earn me the ire of the engineering world and the nonchalance of the rest of the world, on the other side, that is, so needless to say i reluctantly left them out!) The only sad thing about this was that the signing of the letter took a little while and that abominable little while was enough to make the company bus (which till that day gave me the loyal door to door, and mind u, literally so, service) leave from the company premises, which now endangered me reaching at my door without any hassles. It was even more frustrating to see this bus running away right in front of my eyes.

However, since nothing could really go wrong on that day, or since spirits were on an unparalleled high at that time (and if you do know in such moments of high spirit one thinks very clearly!), I with help of some common sense and with some guidance of my friend got into another bus. By doing this I had ensured that i would somehow manage to reach home from a deserted place like Ghansoli even if it would be with a lot of hassles, but lesser than one would face if he be stranded at that place! So I did get the best out of the situation. At this point I'd like to venture further in the state of mind of one that is on the before mentioned unparalleled high spirits. It does tend to think clearly, yes, but I found out that it sees clear opportunity where others see absolutely nothing! It becomes like a complex high speed multi cored processor (nonchalance expected!) which can calculate every possibility in a whiff. It strives to achieve the best result. Its alright till here but what did me in was its trait of not giving up in achieving the best result and the insatiable desire of getting that little bit more.

So this mind of mine suggested, and very credibly at that, that I was capable of getting off the present bus at a signal and run along and catch my loyal bus. Only catch in this master scheme was that the present bus would not stop at the signal since its takes a flyover. This was simpler to take care of, I simply asked the bus driver to stop for a whisker at a certain point on the road. Here is one more thing that did me in, my fellow bus river was unresponsive, and that even after I very earnestly pleaded to him in almost three languages. In despair I tried English at last, that did manage to get a response from him, but it was much like, wide open terrorizing eyes saying 'stop trying to show me down u dumbass'. There seemed very less hope now that the man would stop the bus even for the required whisker, but i did stubbornly stand on the foot pad of the bus (this again being a scheme formulated by that high on spirits mind!).

Well this is where I finally did myself in, and disastrously in at that! The bus slowed down a wee bit, It wasn't slow enough to get off though. It further slowed down, this time tantalizingly close to what one would call the 'ideal speed of getting down a moving bus unscathed' (if you start finding such a term unheard of, i shall remind you again of that smart calculative mind which was running all my actions presently!) I took the bait, (at this point I would like to mention that because of ease of narration and more so the ease of understanding, I shall start considering my mind, the sole commander of these actions, and my physical actions as one being) and got off the bus. No sooner did i touch the ground I realised the grave mistake, the serious error that my supposed multicored processor had managed to make. and i do suggest to everyone not to trust their minds when they are on a high lest you fall prey to such disasters, the bus was at a fairly higher speed than expected. Which meant that I had to do away with the unscathed part of the above mentioned phrase unless i kept apace with the speed of the bus (as physics might suggest or as a daily train commuter might suggest better!)

This speed must have been some 15-20 kilometers per hour, and in trying to frantically keep apace one after another my shoes left my company. To the outsider it looked as if the shoes were flying all over the road and the girls who had a moment back seen me on the foot pad of the bus started screaming their throats out (or so I was told by my friend later!). I, during this time, was still running to avoid falling down in the middle of the road, and hence avoiding being run down by a car, with bare feet. When i finally came to a halt, which was at least 150 metres from where my shoes decided to leave me, the bus too came to a halt and the driver gave me another of that same look, but this time it simply said, "DUMBASS", cause nothing more needed to be said, i believe, after which he sped off. Now i was left alone on the road and dint have another choice but to turn around and collect the shoes.

On my way back the following occurred to me, in this attempt to achieve the best, I had probably missed both buses and left me the worst. But so is the case when you dare to achieve the unachieved, u win magnificently or lose helplessly. It was a bitter irony and i was just gulping it down when it further occurred to me that one shoe was lying right under a car whose driver had halted to view this exciting spectacle that occurred in front of him. I set my sight on that shoe, but just at that moment a truck came from behind, whose driver too was enjoying the excitement just that he had forgotten to apply his brakes while doing so. As a result he crashed into the car, and momentarily now both my shoes were under a vehicle! One under the car and another under the truck. But the blessed momentum of the truck took both the vehicles off my shoes, which i willingly and quickly retrieved. Now i ran back in the opposite direction to the signal to still attempt to catch my loyal bus.

On my sprint to the signal I managed to glance at the truck and the car owner, both of whom were looking heatedly in my direction, and their looks said, "If i ever catch hold of you in my life, I shall make sure you would no longer carry the balls you required to pull off that stunt." I chose to ignore the aftermath of that look and kept running. And I am absolutely unsure how, but i managed to get on that bus! Huffing and puffing, unscathed, glad that no further hassle would be required to reach home. And from somewhere a voice made itself heard, "See, I told you its possible!"

That's Chance for you. You dare to take a chance, there are odds you'll make it, but here are sure more odds you wont. But in situations that are desperate you have a choice to either take that chance and win all or lose all that u presently have or play safe and not risk everything! But for a long time there is a phrase doing rounds - "fortune favors the brave...."