Hanging Out/Hanging On

I’ve finally understood what “hanging out with friends” means. It began with a lovely lasagne lunch yesterday to a veggie and grocery shopping trip around the village, to a movie screening in my friend’s drawing room, to community-cooking, to five idiots on children’s swings under the stars at midnight, to games of truth and dare, to motorbike rides up to the Mumbai-Pune Expressway for tea at four in the morning.

(Note: My friend, who has come to know me quite well over the last three months, asked me during truth or dare: “Despite you being Miss Universe and all, is there ANY guy, living or dead, married or single, who you wish were yours?” I could not answer for five minutes, because I saw all historical Miss Universes committing hara-kiri at this statement.)

Back to the motorbike ride: although I was shivering in a borrowed sweatshirt, and my teeth were chattering uncontrollably, I had the time of my life. I was hoping to catch the sunrise on the highway on our way back, but the lazy West did not seem to want to co-operate.

However, there being a God up above and all, one chap’s bike ran out of petrol and we had to stop. The only petrol pump on the way did not have petrol. Petrol transfer from another bike happened to involve a wet bottle, and the bike did not fancy the adulteration.

So my friend and I, the pillion riders on the other two bikes, took turns holding the guy’s hand and pulling him along with our bikes. What a change from my first bike ride three months ago, when I was holding on to all non-rotating parts of the machinery despite assurances that my friend had been riding for nine years and had not yet lost a passenger to death or suchlike.

Although my shoulder kept making vague threats of slipping out of its designated joint, I held on to the poor chap’s hand because I had made the guy eat a spoon of coffee during Truth or Dare. Crawling along at 10kph cracking jokes, we saw a hint of red on the horizon. It was 6:30 and very light blue all around when I got home.

I heard an unfamiliar sound earlier this morning. Unrestrained laughter. Mine.

Teeny Prayer: Dear God. True to your love for variety, you have created many kinds of madness. Please do not let mine be the kind that sees omens and prophecies in lyrics of songs that play about me. What will my tombstone say? “Inkspill: Overinterpreter of Melodies”????