Once an auto-rickshaw driver told me the mother of all ‘quotes.’

He said, stay away from four kinds of quotes in life. These were khaki quotes (meaning policemen), white quotes (doctors), black quotes (lawyers obviously) and the penultimate, petti-quotes!!!!

” I dont know why I love her like I do
All the changes you put me through
Take my money, my cigarettes
I havent seen the worst of it yet
I wanna know that youll tell me
I love to stay” *

Kickstart lungs is the name of the condition you develop when a single hunk of two stroke machinery wont start. Life comes telescoping down the funnel spigot of fate’s drain and you are more than overwhelmed by the end. Buried, snowed under the absence of further possibilities. If it happens to you in a delhi summer, you get wet with sweat and your breath imitates a pair of leaky cloth bellows. Malviya nagar girls, mostly fair - the ones with heels on their chappals are distinctly uncool while the ones in flat chappals are mod. Things you can’t notice then but remember later.

Beer cans in my bag, the girl at the end of the road waiting. Market boys offer to push while making suggestions that i slug a beer there itself to replenish loss of body fluids - dosent get too far. Call the Coyote who tells me to tilt and kick. This after an hours attempts have run me argound like a beached whale. Thinking things like, ‘ah, milady will take care of the shambles the bike has made me, I get on and ride the thing (Stranger, they call it!)finally; hoping the breeze will dry my shirt out.

“I dont know why you treat me so bad
Think of all the things we could have had
Love is an ocean that I cant forget
My sweet sixteen I would never regret” *

Get from station to station like, to find milady engrossed in a movie. For some (obvious to yez-riders!!!) reason i don’t bother to ask which one it was. Hang around and face the cold wave moving from her face glued to the monitor towards me. I take it into the kitchen and get the beers and act like the leftover vegetables from yesterday’s weekly market.

“I dont know why I love you like I do
All the troubles you put me through
Sixteen candles there on my wall
And here am I the biggest fool of them all” *

After setting the poor girl up, can any man affect a cool and suave attitude when on the way the yezdi took an hour to start? I give up and offer this lil bit of advise:

Avoid dates when yr bike wouldn’t start along the way.
Maybe it’s the hand of fate, maybe it’s your clutch plates, in any case its a loosing fight that all of us who know what it feels like smile at the memories of the pain and understand that to own a y-bike is to take on a personal cross that you bear much to the cynosure of all around but the vital connection with the bike. I swear, its a rare yezdi owner who will leave the bike behind and continue.

“I wanna know that youll tell me
I love to stay
Take me to the river and drop me in the water
Dip me in the river, drop me in the water
Washing me down, washing me down.” *

After the long fight trying to start the bike, you get like Hemmingway’s Old Man and the Sea and you no longer want to leave behind what nearly killed you because even this has become part of you and your lifestory and regardless of the ugly bits of the experience, what ever it is- it is yours. It’s like a connection or a bond with something - anything, which takes you to the limits of yourself or depths and stays with you through it all. Can’t explain it too much, it all sounds ‘fishy.’ In case of Yezdis, I just call it the Union Mechanica. A mystical union between man and machine.

Peace and twin-pipe rule,
- arunesh
* Take me to the River (song lyrics) - Talking Heads (which i am fixiated by because adrian bellew plays this excrutiating solo in the studio version which reminds me of the sound made by a running seizure the yezdi happens)

This article first printed at http://yezdidiaries.blogspot.com/2008/06/kickstart-lungs-is-name-of-condition.html

Keep me rolling

Rolling on down them hills

Just keep me rolling

I’ve had my share of thrills

I don’t care who you are

Just go ahead or stay away

We don’t race strangers

I don’t care what you say

So go ahead and stare

Me and my bike, we’re outta time,

Moving memories in her engine.

Takes more than your motoring maturity

To understand that previous line

Meanwhile here’s a smile

Obviously you recognize the bike

Maybe your daddy had one

I simply earned mine

It didn’t stop me

Becoming a collector

Of a specific time

Average age increasing

Especially those of my kind

Well kid, I stick my chest out

In pride but all I can see

Is you sticking out your behind

Take it away; take it away

That’s all I can say.

Let’s meet in another five years

And count your parts that rot away

New things are hardly built to last

Unless you know the questions to ask

Another Yezdi will always come my way

But I’d keep just one and buy a Jawa any day

Look! I gotta admit it

I’ve got decades of my life

Now behind this handlebar

My pillion even became my wife

Still everyone wants me to buy a car

Here we go again, staring ahead

Through dust, traffic and rain

I will always defend what I love

Life is Gods maintenance bill

For the heart’s an engine we cannot kill

If you love your bike, it’ll last

Don’t forget; headlights and brakes don’t last

Not my will but Yezdi’s be done

Now excuse me, I gotta run.

— Arunesh

Which famous Italian is also considered the godfather of Kuwaiti milkshakes?

How would you describe a yellow journalist?

[Hint: in one word, an adjective]

I wake

I roll

I clean my pipes

I clean your panels

We roll out

as per plan

I leave you

(maybe out in the rain)

You rust and chew my butt

I leave you again

You decide you dont like my plans

I pick her up

You chew me up again

I give up

Either of you will call me again

Maybe I need another plan.

I roll

I plan and pet your panels at the same time

I polish your panels

open communication channels

I paint your pipes -

weekend attention thing types

etcetera,…

We roll again;

She dosen’t.