One for the road

Every person, at one point in their lives, should drive long distance alone.

It's not the speed. It's not the loneliness. It's not the danger. Not even the independence. None of these are the reasons. It's the unpredictability. It's the vibrance. It's the life.

College is over and I decided to drive from home to Coimbatore for a quick errand. That of cleaning up and vacating my hostel room. There is nothing melancholic about it though. My room is filled with four years of junk. I have forgotten what color my bed was used to be. Some pale color. Now it is in a color that is redefining the spectrum. The boxes are full of papers that I still can't figure out why I put there in the first place. And of course, there are slam books to fill.

The drive to Coimbatore was quite uneventful. It was quite hot but the road was empty and surprisingly great. I never knew my car could go up to 110. I never thought my car could go past 70!

The trip to hostel was...well...not disturbing but definitely slightly disconcerting. I have always considered myself a loner. I have lots of friends but no matter how close they get, so far, I have never let their departure trouble me. But this trip to my hostel changed that a bit.

I sorted through some of the junk and ended up sitting there in my bed for hours. Long lost photographs, permission forms for vacations that ended up being nothing more than a trip to ooty, doodles and sketches and notes in my books standing for the times that we had. I resolved to throw all those rubbish away.

On my way back, there was a steady drizzle. Like angels landing softly on my windshield. There was Bob Marley with the Wailers adding to the ambience. And the road was empty.

At that time, my life took on the shapeless form of the highway. A highway is dynamic. There is an ever-changing permenance to it. It is sometimes menacing, sometimes warm, mostly cold. It doesn't care. It doesn't show any love. If you respect the highway, it still doesn't care. It's like the sky. It just is.

And with that, I realised how amazingly similar life was. Life is unpredictable. No matter how careful you have been, no matter how closely you follow these investment and insurance and retirement ads, life has a bag full of tricks. Just when you think life has nothing more to offer you, it comes up with the equivalent of an eighteen-wheeler barreling down the road.

But the highway seemed to have taken a liking to me. No nasty surprises. No mean tricks. Just me, my car and the highway. I didn't go as fast as I did earlier. It's hard to, when you have a boot full of rubbish.