The Yezdi Jinx

Isaac had a Yezdi bike. He still has it. He had a girlfriend. But he doesn’t have one now. According to Rameez, they broke up some time back. Since then, Rameez has been doing (overdoing?) his duty to Isaac as a loyal friend. Cunning bastard that he is, he played both sides of the fence, lending a shoulder here and an ear there.

If it got over with this shoulder lending and ear sharing, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this post. But no sir, it had to go on. After all, the likes of Mahesh Butt and Karan Johar make a living out of this kind of stuff. Yeah you got it, Rameez ended up lending more than a shoulder to the girl in question.

The girl is Bengali, Isaac a Malayali and if it worked, it would have been Diwali. But things didn’t work out quite like that. Fate, it seems cares naught for poetic rhyme. But it does seem addicted to repetition. The new equation still reads, girl Bengali, boy Malayali.

I don’t quite understand the mechanics of over-the-phone-crying. But the fairer sex seems to be very capable at the act. What is more, they usually get one bugger or the other listen to all those sniveling noises too! Rameez fell for it right away. Knowing how sexually frustrated the guy is, neither I nor my house mates were none too impressed. Rameez being Rameez, he was bound to screw it all up anyways. So we weren’t too jealous either.

But that was until the day he said (read: announced in a gigantic 10000Watt power noise) that he is going out for dinner with the girl in q. Now, that was taking things a bit too far wasn’t it? Here we were, six of us, as hungry as the next kid in Somalia (for a normal social relationship) and this rich kid (read Rameez) walks in sucking on a damn cone of ice cream (read dinner with girl friend). There were silent prayers on all lips save one, for an utterly disastrous ending to this affront to our bachelor hood.

The exact situation was thus. The day, a Saturday. The time, around 6 P.M. Apart from the house dwellers, quite a few stragglers were also present. The occasion was a treat from a U.S returnee friend at one of the semi-posh Malayali hotels in Bangalore. A lot of chit chat and leg pulling going on, the music turned on to full volume and people having a nice time before the commencement of the treat. Rameez being a clinical sociopath by nature walks in at this happy juncture to announce the sad news of his impending dinner at another place.

Prasanth Rajan a.k.a Lolan: Da, tell her that you will come tomorrow for the dinner, why do you want to miss the treat? It will be great fun with so many of us attending.

Rameez: Poda! Why should I spend time with a bunch of losers like you when this lovely girl calls me over for dinner?

Now if Rameez had stopped with that, we MAY have forgiven him. But he had to gloat! A rich kid minding his own business and eating an ice cream in front of emaciated Somalians is one thing. The same kid, flaunting the ice cream before those hungry eyes is quite another. You got to experience it to know it! We were lost for words.

To give the reader a sample of the things he said:-
1) I think it will be candle light dinner at her place.
2) If that doesn’t work out then we will go to some romantic hotel and have the dinner.
3) Maybe be I should go to a discotheque with her. All the moving and shaking is bound to “loosen” her up a bit.
4) Guys don’t worry if I don’t come back for the night, I may be sleeping over at her place you know (Rameez later told me that his idea was to have dinner, go to his cousins house and come back the next morning anouncing that he had actually slept over. If this had happened, bangalore would have seen a mass suicide!)

His gloating session over, he left a bunch of “lately-happy” guys cursing their own karma.

Looking back on the scene I couldn’t help but notice the “Shishupalan” factor in all that gloating. Shishupalan for the Mahabharatha illiterate is the dude who gloated to Krishna during Yudhishtaras Yagna and got his neck chopped off with the Sudarshana Chakra.

The next part of this story is based on Rameez’s own confessions. He is more than capable of fudging facts and making it all look very trivial. But I would suggest the reader amplify (by a factor of about ten) whatever goes on next.

Rameez started off on his Yezdi and barely three kilometers from home, it starts to rain heavily. Due to Bangalore’s ultra modern sewage systems, he finds himself in a mini flood in about 5 minutes. All around him bikers are stopping and cursing their luck. “Yezdi is the best, it may be old but look at it run without a hitch in knee deep water when all these modern bikes are choking” thinks Rameez and before the thought is out, the Yezdi sputters to a halt.

!@#%@$%^@$& must have been the next thought he had, but he refused to confess it.

Anyways he knows that if a Yezdi stops, it normally stops for good. So he calls up the girl to call off the date. The location is diary circle fly over. He moves the bike to the flyover and just for the heck of it, tries to start it once again and viola! It starts! Considering that to be a god send miracle he calls up to announce that the date is still on. Just as he kept the phone down, the engine wheezes to a halt. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t budge this time even after repeated cranking, cursing and pushing.

The humiliating decision to call up Lolan for help took a lot of time to make. As he puts it, the rain helped the decision a lot. Just before the call though, he tried just once more to get the bike to start and miracle of miracles it started!!! Not wanting to push his luck too much he decided to call up the girl only after riding a few meters and make sure that this time he was going to reach.

Call 3: The date is on, the bike started, just wait a little bit more ok

The Yezdi may be old, but it had a heart of gold so this time around it didn’t wait for him to put the cell back in his pocket before it stalled again.

Call 4: It stopped again! Date is off, sorry

Lolan (enjoying himself at the treat), gets a phone call now.

Call 5: Lola, I am in deep shit dude, Yezdi……

It is well beyond my writing capabilities to explain the amount of leg pulling that happened then. In the end lolan agrees to get Moosa Bhai the Yezdi specialist from Shivaji Nagar and come over.

Moosa Bhai comes in, takes a look and says it can be solved in a jiffy.

Call 6: Date is on, the mechanic is here and he says it is ok

Moosa Bhai takes another look and says that it is going to take a few days more. The coil is gone sir, I can’t do anything now. Sorry.

Call 7: Date is off. Mechanic says it will take time to fix

Call 8: (Incoming, from Anand) Dude, how is the candle light dinner going on. Arrey yaar, tell me, are you facing any problems lighting all the candles in the rain?? Need my help? Rameez disconnects

Call 9: (Incoming from Aneesh) Dude, what is the color of her bed sheet? Rameez disconnects.

Call 10: (Incoming from Samjith) Dude, did you kiss her, or was it just food and talk? Rameez disconnects.

Later investigation suggested that he got a lot more calls but he refused to pick them up.

All this time, Moosa Bhai is taking a final look and in a short time he starts the bike. “Very small problem sir, nothing to worry, you can go ahead. I was mistaken earlier.”

This time, for reasons unknown, he did not call her again….:)

Rameez had a Yezdi bike. He still has it. He never had a girlfriend. He still dosen't.