Rollercoaster Ride

There is no moment of delight in any trip like the beginning of it. So was this trip to Kerala in my Alto with my friends- Rishi, Neha and Jai.

‘What a pleasant morning?!’ said Rishi. ‘Yaah! Lovely weather’ opined Neha as we drove through the woods. ‘Lush green trees have moved my heart’ exclaimed Jai. ‘Wind is playing the melodious music and nature is dancing to its beats’ romantically narrated Rishi. Swirling winds started blowing all of a sudden. No sooner I could realize that it would rain, it started drizzling and few drops fell over our car. 1st rain of summer filled our hearts with ecstasy. I was stupefied to see the tiny droplets trickle from the jumbo tree. As the occasion could have it; we were enjoying our journey. Now we were half way to Kerala.

Zooooh!! Crossed a Tata Safari splashing dirty water on us. What irked Neha was- the expression of the driver of that Safari – showing thumbs down as he over took our car.  Rishi said ‘This is not done! Let’s race’. I asked “what?” Jai volunteered – ‘Let me drive’, unwillingly I gave him the control of my car.

No sooner I gave the control to Jai; he took us on a spin. Zooh! dutth!, dutth!, ahh!, Woohz! oops! …. I realized we were racing against that Safari. What a plight? An Alto racing against Safari, haan! ‘Why are we driving so fast Jai?’ - I asked. ‘Oh ho! Don’t disturb. Let me concentrate’ fumed Jai. I gave up and decided to enjoy this bumpy drive as an adventure ride. ‘Neha look at that honey hive on that tree. Isn’t it amazing?’ I exclaimed. She replied ‘Dear, don’t divert our attention. Don’t you see we are struggling to overtake that Safari and show him thumbs down!’ ‘Neha switch off the music it is such a disturbance’ shouted Rishi.

Dhadak!! Dhudak!! Dhadak!!ufff! In the spirit to overtake someone we were hurting our backs. We took a shortcut through a muddy road and ended up in a ditch. We had to accelerate the car out of that ditch which meant my car would have to bare extra service expense this month.:-( Jai wouldn’t give up! We continued our adventure drive. ‘Oh No! We just missed him’-cribbed Neha. What more? Jai thought that only way to overtake that Safari is to jump the traffic signal. So we did. ‘Yahoo! We are ahead of that car’- cheered Rishi. ‘Wait! Oh no! Why is that police van following us?’ asked Jai. We had to slow down and pay the fine for jumping the signal. But more interesting fact was that the driver of Safari had realized that we were racing against his vehicle. As expected he was enjoying it and was waiting for us to finish the formalities with traffic police. He was driving slowly so that we could chase him. He turned around, looked at us and gave a smirk and drove off. We were disappointed as we reached Kerala.

I thought over it. When we started we were enjoying our trip. We were singing, dancing, eating, talking and loving our journey. Just that one feeling to race against that car spoiled it all. Soothing music became disturbance, talking and eating became diversion and beauty of nature became distraction. All our energies got focused on unfruitful desire to race and out perform some one. We were in Alto. It has its own speed limitation and in no way could exceed the speed of Safari. On the other hand Alto has its own advantages and Safari has its own limitations. It was a foolish attempt from both the sides- On our side to drain our energy when we knew the limitation of our car’s speed. From the Safari Driver’s end also because Safari is not designed to compete with Alto in speed, it is designed for much higher speed but he wasted his energy in competing and outperforming our car.

Even in life many a times we enter into an unhealthy competition trying to outperform or mimic others. But the fact is; each of us is unique strands in the intricate web of life and is here to enjoy that uniqueness. Life would be a better deal if we understand that with our own capacities and limitations we are destined to serve our unique purpose. For no one can do a better job of being me than me.