Curious case of 6 friends on 6-6-6

Before I divulge this fascinating tale of six friends on an adventurous journey on 6th June 2006,
Here’s a preamble I would like to present
“All the incidents presented henceforth are facts and true to the best of my knowledge”

There are times when insignificant things occupy the better part of your brain and make you brood over thing that might go undetected at normal times. This thing may be an omen, premonition, presentiment, magic or call it whatever you may but is something you cant get rid off in a hurry. The morning of 6th of June was no extraordinary day. A fine day with a beckoning weather –a time to go out , hang out with friends or go on for a long drive- specially when you have nothing better to do. We had buried all the semester papers of our Engineering career for good , and there was no scope of it returning to haunt us ever. The heart was feeling lighter those days and a bike trip to some adventurous place was in the offing.

It was after the trip been decided and all the addition/subtraction of manpower and resources( read friends and bikes) we came to the ugly notice that we have 3 bikes – that equals 6 friends and the time of departure at 4 pm to a place called lehnadri- which is some 200 kms from Pune. People who undertake these kind of trips( and especially Indians) would be aware that a delay of a couple of hours is within our protocol and is never debated and so the earliest we could start was exactly 6 pm according to my watch and it was at this felicitous moment when our heart was full of compassion for human race and mother nature and all thing bright and beautiful- that Manoj – the prankster of our group brought out his greatest finding of the day- 6 people at 6pm on 6-6-6. The revelation felt more ominous than somebody sneezing as you start for the day and then a couple of black cats crisscrossing your path. To say that we all got a shock of 230 Volt AC current wont be an understatement because however rational and non superstitious you are, there are at times when the powers surrounding you are so strong that your brain superimposes the frequency immediately and foretells you that something not so good in awaiting.

But when you have a group of young bloods who don’t give a damn to all these antediluvian aspects of the human race and mother nature and want to have their share of adventure and pleasure- there is no looking back, especially if you are bedeviled enough already internally that you have no issues with your external counterpart. So began our memorable journey – on board
Shiv, Abhishek, Vinty, Manhuge, Ritesh and Me.

Those of you who believe in Murphy’s law would agree that this day was one of the rare occasions where Mr. Murphy would be more than happy to leave the comfort of his coffin to behold his theories getting proved- not that they don’t occur otherwise, but as in his pious words-“ If a series of damages is to be done, the first one will be the most damaging” so was ours, primarily because that particular damage would be the precursor of the other damages that would follow. So Mr. Vinty very proud of his calisthenics on bike, rammed into an innocuous scooter and passed Mr. Murphy’s hypothesis with flying colors and set the chain reactions for events to follow. Mr. Vinty with formidable build took the jolts of the crash in high spirits but I cannot say the same for his poor fuel injection pipe which bore all the brunt and didn’t even bothered us by showing up (which is again Mr. Murphy some hypothesis , that the most important and costliest item will be the first to be damaged and would be the last to be detected). That also proves that Mr. Vinty was neither important nor costly.

The fuel injection pipe finally decided to show up only after we had covered a considerable distance from the city and where there were no repair shop (Mr. Murphy seemed to add all the external factors possible to facilitate the outcome). The appearance of the culprit was however overshadowed by the appearance of the digits on the speedometer which was- 666 (hard to believe? but my friend, truth is stranger than fiction) .The fuel injection pipe craving for importance and attention now started leaking profusely and somewhat made us wonder if it ever carried so much transaction before (Mr. Vinty’s bike seldom carried so much petrol and it might have impossible for the fuel pipe to work at this enhanced capacity) but the appearance of the number considered to be the devil’s incarnation on the speedometer , made the bike look spooky and haunted for a moment and suddenly Mr. Manoj or manhuge who was the pinion rider once again started babbling about his wonderful discovery of the correlation of the omens. Undeterred we decided to move ahead and keep looking for some mechanic shop in the en route.

The highway through Nasik fata is generally a busy one and one that is always swarming with a lot of mechanic shops on either side, but that day it was wearing a deserted look –probably because of the truckers strike going on that day. So we decided to give Mr. Vinty’s bike cover, as we skimmed across the Nasik-Mumbai highway. (to be continued…)