An unspoken bond rests between a man and his car. It stems from understanding, from intimacy the likes of which,lovers seek to steal from the darkest of nights. It stems from his light touch at her wheel, and the sweet nothings she whispers back at him, the consistent purr of her engine escalating to pitch crescendo as he eggs her on, her pistons throbbing at his touch. His touch, gentle enough to not startle her, and yet firm enough to vanquish any resistance, as is the way of a man with a virgin. The rain storms down, a torrent like the tears of a fallen god, and he makes her come alive, taking her through her paces, gently caressing her treads through the curves. She moans, nay she rages..but she gets him through it all. She may not be as she once was. The menace of the years haven’t left her untouched.The years,they show on her proud visage. She has her flaws. She cant turn on a dime. Maybe she guzzles too much fuel. He knows her flaws, much as he knows HER, inside out.Every curve, every secret as if it were etched onto the very fibre of his being. She’s always been worth it all. And when the days are dark, and he lies forsaken by friends and lovers, he knows, that hope will ensue, the moment that ignition key turns, and he revs her once more unto the open highway. Rain or shine. Day or night. I’ve never quite understood what love means. But this must be the closest you can get to it.
To you then, my fair lady, this solemn proclamation. Should a day befall us, where the road of life throws us a hairpin bend that proves too steep, with my dying breath I’ll have you know that in life, you gave a man a seat he covets more than an emperor’s throne. In death, you bore a warrior to his glorious Valhalla.
But not this day. This day,we ride.

   “Yaar, Zindagi  kutti cheez hai” Juggernaut moaned. I could see that he was just getting started.
“Sutta Dio”. When there is booze flowing like the goddamn Potpoto Nala in her monsoon swells, talk of that other, much more potent intoxicant- Women, can never be too far off. The lighter clicked, and i braced myself….

“Payal mere saath sahi nahin ki, yaar.” Juggernaut, moaned. “Ijjat nahin karti woh mera.”

He didn’t expect an answer. None was forthcoming. I stared at my drink in solace.

“Aur jis din usko lift diye, us din bhi mazaak uda gayi”

“Bhenchod, we almost banged my dad’s car getting into that shanty lane”. My old man was particularly touchy about that old fiat.
“Woh kabhi meri nahin hogi,lavda.”

Juggernaut had eyes for her ever since they’d been kids. Payal and her folks would come to stay with his family and the bugger would ditch me and get busy showing her the sights on his rickety old Royal Enfield we’d fondly come to know as Jaanu. Far from breathtaking mountains you get to see in bollywood romances, it was our own Potpoto nala that bore testament to the growth of that warm fuzzy faggotry called love in Juggernaut’s heart. Our Potopoto nala between the monsoons where she rages through anything in her path and the summers where she drifts with abandon has seen boys grow to men. She has seen blood spilt, and she has seen tears quietly cried into the night. Needless to say, Juggernaut’s advances were ignored.

To this day, I feel that he’s gotten nothing put contempt in return for his troubles, but try explaining that to a man in love.  He just nods his head like an idiot and pretends to agree while you and him both realize deep within that the time when he had any hope of controlling how he feels is now long passed. And so we bitch. We crib. And we blame life and fate for what was coveted most dearly but never possessed.

I quaffed off my drink and stubbed out my charminar.
“PYAAR kutti cheez hai. Jaane de raand ko.” Juggernaut isn’t the only one who turns into Mr-gand-maraye-duniya-dekh-lenge-bhenchod after downing a few.

“Raand nahi hai wo! Pyaar karte hain ussey. Payal ke siwa kuch nahin.”
Women being the fairer sex, and better versed in matters of love and human relationships will probably tell you different, but here’s what old Bhediya has learnt about love from his time spent on this planet.
First, the truest metric of a man’s love can be found in that he still loves a woman immediately after jerking off. After we are ‘done’, the next few seconds, the brain processes feelings of incredible remorse and disgust. Only true love can counteract that.
Or as a man better known for his eloquence in brevity once put it. “Tu hila ke browser ka tab band karta hai. Tab band nai kiya, toh pyaar hai tujhe.”

Second, there is no truer expression of a man’s loyalty that him stopping his degenerate friends from dragging his woman into the cycle of verbal perversion that constitutes just about every piece of conversation exchanged between the only the truest of friends. With that, Juggernaut had drawn a line in the sand. A line over a woman he’s never possessed, but a line nonethless.

“Get fucked! Bakchodi band kar, and give her an ultimatum. Aati hai toh aa, warna maa chuda.” Whoever says booze doesnt make you more of a man is telling you a filthy lie. Men dont solve problems. They refuse to deal with them completely, under the pretext of it not bothering them. If a bottle of whiskey and a few packs of toasted charminar dont put some hair on your chest, nothing will.

The smug bastard gave me an all-knowing smile, before whipping out his knife and stabbing inches deep into wood,as if to emphasize his clincher in that one glint of steel.
” MEGHNA!” he spat out with relish. The “Ab gaand phati naa teri,bhosadikey?” was silent.
It need not have been said out loud. My thoughts had turned to her a while back. They always did. The ‘suroor’ as we call it, doesn’t make you forget. It takes a doggone battering ram to the walls you try to build in haste as your world burns to the ground around you, grabbing you by the neck and thrusting you into a mexican standoff with your deepest fears and sorrows. In doing that, it turns pain to ache, a slow burning fuse of remorse and helplessness that does you the singular favour of being able to care immensely and not attaching plugged nickel’s worth to your existence, all at the same time. Courage, it fosters in merry abundance, but a tainted courage spawned from masochism. .To ache is feel. To feel is to live. To live is to die.

Jim Morrison sang out to me from Juggernaut’s fecal quality speakers.
“…Women seem wicked, when you’re unwanted. Streets are uneven when you’re down…”
The fuck did he know? Or maybe he knew something I didnt. The fuck did I know anyway?

I thumbed out a cigarette partially from the packet, bit down on the end and pulled it out.
Juggernaut, clicked out his zippo, the blue flame danced around ,raging ceaseless against the wind.
“Kyunki aap jaise mard ko poora santosh dena, charminar ka hi dum hai.”He proffered,along with his unenunciated sympathies and a wry smile.Nasty business, this.
The sutta lit up, and the battering ram breached through.

“Après nous, le déluge“