3:2 Debate Is Life, The Rest Is Just Prep-Time. Chapter 3

This is chapter 3 of a series, scroll down if you're looking for the earlier chapters.

Some of us, of course, take this freedom a little too seriously, as the story will show.

Back to the where we were. The six of us were walking along Rajpath after Shobhit and I made the break. Suddu was sulking. Suddenly we noticed a group of well dressed people, perhaps just out of a club, looking at us. Not looking, staring at us. In the way that one might stare at a dirty dog that’d sneaked into a presidential party. Quite obviously, we were a little taken aback by their unfriendly demeanor and more than just a little confused too. We looked at each other, befuddled. That’s when we realized that we were only five, not six. Pranay was missing. It didn’t take long to find him, however. The strangers’ stares alternated between us and a point behind their fancy car. We followed their stares and there he was, standing just behind the car with his back towards us. Legs spread out wide, hands disappearing to the front of his body, somewhere near the abdomen, a sound similar to a small mountain stream pervading the otherwise silent night.

For those who don’t know, Rajpath has lush lawns on either side separated from the road by foot high milky white pillars connected to one another by chain link. After Pranay’s little misadventure, one of those pillars is now a sickly brownish yellow instead.

Extremely embarrassed, we put on our best “Oh we didn’t know him, Oh we just happen to be wearing similar sweatshirts with the same college name on them, we’re just the five of us, we don’t believe in urinating on Rajpath” smiles and walked away quickly. Pranay meanwhile whistled the sweet whistle of relief and walked past the strangers nonchalantly smiling at them. When he caught up with us, we expressed our extreme disgust at his distasteful behavior. Shobhit told him off for his peeing in public and for the desecration of our sacred Rajpath. Suddu repeatedly said, “Yuck dude, yuck”. Salhotra shook his head in disappointment. Pranay, of course, couldn’t understand this at all and defended himself with arguments that are unwelcome even in a debate.

“Isn’t this a democracy? Don’t we have real freedom? We should be free to do what we want, it’s Rajpath! I say we should all pee on Rajpath to send a message to those trying to destroy our freedom. I’m going to call it ‘squirting against terror’ or…’piddling for protection’ …or….” he let out in a tirade against all those who thought public excretion was incorrect. I’m not sure what part of this was Pranay and how much the liquids in him were talking but in any case I felt the need to step in at this point. To try and convince him in a gentle, patient, logical and completely non judgmental manner about what he was doing. So I went up to him and said, “Pranay if you ever bring that thing out in public again, I’ll break it. Not kidding. No seriously, I’ll personally rip it off.” Ever logical, Pranay couldn’t deny the weight of my sound argument and looked convinced that peeing in public was not a good idea.

After spending the next couple of hours in the lawns outside the Rashtrapati Bhawan, it was time to head back. Thanks to his Facebook addiction, Shobhit was wont to click pictures all over the place in what he believed were realistic poses. As expected, on the way back, he kept instructing us to “stand here, look that way, put your arm around this one” etc for the benefit of his camera. In his attempt to recreate the evening in its entirety, at some point he asked Pranay to pose as though he were relieving himself.

Pranay had other ideas.

“It looks quite obviously fake unless I unzip.”

“So unzip then”

“Only if Suzie is willing to make an exception”, he said looking at me with a wicked smile.

“Yeah ok, but just for the camera”, was my reluctant answer.

At this point, Pranay turned his back towards us, blatantly unzipped and before anyone had the slightest idea what was going on, created a huge puddle right in the middle of the road. Then he turned his head behind, looked at us smiling and with a hint of madness writ on his face intoned, “Freedom”.

Life is funny. Sometimes what you think is a rabbit is actually a snake in disguise. Other times, who you thought was a civilized Khar boy turns out to be a public urinator. But life plays its finest card when the Khar boy thought you were clicking a picture but you were actually shooting a video. That’s right, we have a video of Pranay piddling on Rajpath. As you can imagine, this puts an enormous amount of power in our hands. So great is this power, in fact, that I have no idea what to do with it.

This perverse turn of events had a profound impact on Suddu. While he’d been sulking all evening, now he just couldn’t stop. He was literally bouncing up and down, yelling all the while. Imagine a chubby, ninety-something-kg, near bald guy rising and falling while intermittently screeching out, “Dude he peed on Rajpath, he peed on Rajpath. Dude dude dude, he peed on Rajpath…..he peed on Rajpath hahaha, he peed on Rajpath…….duuuude.”

Most folks would agree we’d already had a pretty crazy time that night but like other things on that trip, it wasn’t over just yet.

Tired, we decided to head back and get to sleep. Which is when we discovered that Delhi isn’t quite Mumbai when it comes to getting a ride back home at two in the morning. For the next forty minutes we tried stopping every rickshaw or cab that passed us by. Some of them didn’t want to go where we wanted them to. Others just wanted to go home. With time, our frustration grew and so did our madness. Beyond a point we start hollering out to virtually any vehicle in sight. We must have seemed pretty nuts, six guys yelling out to everything on the road. Some drivers even acknowledged our requests with a polite display of their middle finger. Still, intoxicated by our recent adventures and compelled by lack of another option, we kept calling out.

At some point a bulldozer appeared. The kind they use in construction, mechanized arms at both ends and a small glass cabin in between where the driver sat and controlled the whole thing. We thought it was funny to call out to it for a ride. You can understand our surprise, however, when the huge machine paused suddenly, took a U-Turn, then headed in our direction.

The driver couldn’t have been more than 25 years of age. He leaned out of his window and asked with a smile so fresh it seemed out of place with the 2 am setting, “Kahan jaogey bauji? (Where to sir?).”

“Kahin ley chalo yaar (Wherever you might want to take us)”

“Chalo aa jao (Hop on then)”

And that was that, we were riding on a bulldozer in the middle of the night on the streets of Delhi. Some of us sat on the huge wheel covers, others crowed in the cabin with the driver. It was interesting enough that this bulldozer was moving on a 5 lane high speed expressway but what made the experience particularly special was that we were driving in the direction opposite the traffic. Oh yes, we also had no idea where we were going. Ever so often, a car would come speeding from the opposite direction and honk loudly. The driver, unfazed, would then scare him off by raising the mechanized arm in front of the vehicle threateningly.

The driver, Aazam Khan, was as talkative as a schoolgirl. In the short while we were with him, we got to know he was from Gorakhpur and that he had a brother and an uncle in Mumbai, not far from where we lived. He was ambitious too, and would be off to the gulf soon, to pursue greener pastures. His one complaint with his current life, though, was the loneliness that came with driving a bulldozer around the city at night. That explained why he seemed so thrilled to be doing us a favour. Awesome fellow, Aazam Khan.

At some point we crossed India gate, where armed guards stood around with rifles pointed at anyone who happened to cross in front of them. Spotting this speeding bulldozer with six ruffians hanging at the sides, they raised their guns and took aim. For a moment everything froze. Even Aazam Khan’s ever-present smile seemed to fade. Then as we came closer they realized we could hardly be a terrorist threat and broke off into the raucous, uninhibited laughter that only law enforcers are allowed to have.

Anyway, we got back to the hostel after a ride that beat anything else I’d ever been on. It was quite a night but something else lay ahead of us. A quarterfinal was scheduled for the morning and for once we were in it. We went to sleep hopeful and elated but with little idea that an entirely new chapter in life was about to begin for all of us.

The Delhi story wasn't over just yet, not by far.

To be continued...