highway to hell

'You try to loosen the radial while I'll try to raise the car up'

I had never imagined that my first lessons on how to change a punctured tyre would be on NH-66 at 2330 hours. The drive from Pondichery to Bangalore was proving more adventurous than we had together imagined. 

 

The anticipated scenic five hour drive cutting through the forests had already entered in its eighth hour with no respite in sight. For over three hours we had been cruising at a little over 10 kmph on a highway that could barely squeeze in the traffic in either direction. The relentless downpour had reduced visibility (no street lights and no moon light either) to the immediate potholes (which seemed to have been carefully dug like army trenches at every ten metres). The 25 km distance from Tindivanam to Thiruvanamalai had made us grow wiser by over 2000 trenches and few dislodged bones from our vertebral column.

Heavy rains, hungry stomachs, harrowed bones, for us there was nothing that could go wrong any further. But we were a bit too soon to presume. What happened next drove us to the borders of our patience and civility!

We were desperately hoping to reach Thiruvanamalai, as the Google map showed it to be a well settled city. And we hoped that the National highway stretch through the city would end our woes. At around 2230 the navigator finally indicated that we have entered the city. The potholes too were now comfortably spaced. We stopped by to buy some water and resumed. 

 

In barely five minutes the highway was filled up by hundreds of people in their traditional attire walking ahead. Having no idea as to what was happening, we thought to trail them when we saw a barricade being put up with the state police waving to us to turn right. 

 

'Another route? We turned right much to the dismay of our navigator who kept telling us to take a U-turn. A right turn followed by another right turn through the sea of traffic and we entered a deserted open space. Dead End. It looked like an abandoned bus terminal but there was no way ahead.

We took a U-turn only to bump into the police again. Only this time we took a left into what looked like a passage through some residential area hoping this would help us bypass our troubles. A few lost souls like us, followed suit. 

 

As we drove the lanes got narrower and bumpier until we reached a point where we were told to go back as there was an impossible jam ahead. It took us ten minutes to carve a U-turn as more cars and bikes kept piling on from behind. Desperately looking for a way back in a lane that had never seen two cars together in it's life time, I finally had to get out to pick up cycles parked along the way and push them aside. 

There was neither any faith left in the navigator nor any belief in our own common sense. And to add to it, nobody there seemed to speak a language familiar to us to tell us what was happening.

Ten minutes later, the mystery was revealed. Driving through yet another lane we halted at the crossroads much to our amazement. Literally thousands of men, women and children were walking across chanting hymns. It looked as if they were under some spell guiding them towards an unknown destination.There was no way you could get past them, unless you barged in knocking off a few. Constant honking and appeals broke the spell of a few old men who took pity on us looking at our desperate faces. They channelled the unimaginable human traffic in a way that got us past that intersection. 

 

We managed to get back to the highway somehow but nothing had changed. After few minutes we were again trailing the sea of devotees. We could honk but it would have fallen on deaf ears. So we gathered all our patience and simply followed wondering 'What could be the occasion that made thousands of people take on the highway at midnight?'

Forty minutes later we were back to our original 'new' self, chugging at 15 kmph. A couple of kilometres ahead we stopped to fill ourselves only to find that the tyres had busted and the clouds too were about too. In fifteen minutes I knew the nuts, bolts and springs of the process. The restaurant owner told us about a 24 hour open automobile repair shop and also of a place to spend the rest of the night. Hotel 'Ratna' in Uthangiri! Was this a Jab We Met - 2 in making? 

 

The moment the garage owner saw the RJ number plate he got excited. And while he and his men gossiped about us getting stuck on this weird highway, we decided to review our decision of staying overnight in that hotel. After a quick check-up we were told that the rim of the wheel too had deformed apart from the puncture and that it could be replaced only when we got back to Bangalore. 

 

Hoping that these tyres would last us for this journey, we started again. It was at Krishnagiri that our prayers bore fruit. A swanky new NH 7 was intersecting the old and wrinkled NH 66! So putting our navigator on sleep mode we took to it. By this time I had already dozed off a couple of times in an effort to stay awake together. 

 

An hour later, as I was struggling to keep my eye lids apart I found the car getting off the highway. Scared I looked at Aish who updated that the car had swerved off the lane as he too had dozed off due to exhaustion while driving so it was best to sleep for few hours before we resumed. And so we drove to the nearest Mc Donalds drive through and shut down completely. 

 

Ninety minutes of the deepest sleep ever cleared up some space in our brains and we finally pulled up in our apartments' underground parking at 0730 hrs. It was a good thirteen and a half hour of an unforgettable drive! We got eagerly into the lift to join our minds which had already crashed out in the bed above. I quickly opened the lock, chucked the shoes and headed for it. Oh God! I had never loved my bed so much before. I wanted to apologize to it for never having understood its importance before. I wanted to dance and jump around like a fool! I wanted to …