By the time I stepped out of Tumkur Tatte, the traffic was in full swing. It was about 9:45 AM on a bright day with the sun smiling benevolently on Earth.
Since I was arm-twisted out of the restaurant, I thought I might as well check out the other mechanic.
I walked back to the junction, crossed the main road, and walked a little further until I saw a mechanic’s garage on my left. It was still shut, but there was a young guy pacing the length of the garage while talking animatedly on his mobile.
I thought he was the owner of the garage, so I waited for his conversation to get over. When I spoke with him, I learned that he wasn’t the owner, but a neighbour, who lived in the adjacent house, and he was most likely speaking with his girlfriend.
“The garage will open in about half an hour,” he said.
I must have looked really dejected, because he inquired, rather kindly, if I needed anything urgently.
“Yes, my car battery is dead and I need a jumpstart urgently.”
“Oh, there’s a small battery shop about two minutes ahead on this road. He also opens at 10:30 but his phone number is written on the shutter. You can try calling him.”
I thanked him and rushed to the battery shop. It wasn’t open, but the owner’s number was painted on the shutter. I punched in the number to call him. The phone rang, but no one answered. I tried again. Still no response. I tried for the third time. No luck again.
Dejected, I returned the phone to my pocket—which almost plopped out immediately when I jumped in fright upon hearing scooter brakes screeching right behind me.
I did an “about turn” in mid-air, fortunately, landing safely on my feet. In front of me was a man seated on a scooter. When my adrenaline settled, I noticed he was a middle-aged man, and he had a red scooter with a battery placed on the footboard near his legs.
“Are you waiting for me?” he asked me.
“Are you the owner of this shop?”
He nodded, and I felt like the fates had finally smiled at me.
“Yes, yes, I am waiting for you. I even tried calling you sometime back.” The words tumbled out of my mouth.
“I was in traffic. I couldn’t answer the phone. Sorry. What do you want?”
I explained the entire situation to him and also explained that I needed to leave as soon as possible because I was headed to Bangalore.
He assured me that he’d get my car started right away. Motioning me to sit on the pillion seat, he blasted his scooter like a rocket. I grabbed the stepni behind me to regain my balance and gave him directions to the car.
While waiting at a signal, he told me that he normally didn’t open his shop at this hour, but some work had made him leave home early and here he was. I was lucky to have found him at that time.
When we reached the car, I got into the driver’s seat, unlatched the bonnet, and waited for him to hook up the batteries. However, he spent a few minutes examining something before connecting the car’s battery to his spare battery.
“Start the car,” he told me, peering from the side of the bonnet.
What I heard next was music to my ears. My car purred back to life. At that moment, the car’s rather loud and harsh engine sounded sweeter than Shreya Ghosal’s super-melodious voice.
When I stepped out to pay him, he pointed to a white plastic box attached to the right edge of the bonnet scoop. It was the circuit breaker of the new 90 watt headlights that I had installed before leaving Pune. He explained that it had a short-circuit which caused the light to stay on even after I had flipped off the light switch the day before.
He went on to explain a few more things, but his voice was drowned out by a noisy truck and four auto-rickshaws that rumbled one after another.
The only thing I could figure out was that he had fixed the problem with the circuit breaker.
Sometimes I do things that are outright foolish. This was one of them. I really should have asked him to repeat the last part, but I was in such a hurry to reach Bangalore before the peak evening traffic started that I simply nodded, thanked him, paid, and sped on towards the highway.
The drive on the Belagavi–Bangalore highway was uneventful except for a diversion that had me taking a detour for a long time, causing further delay in the journey. Not to mention, the road had weird speed-breakers. They were a set of lots of small speed-breakers, but they were higher than such speed-breakers usually are. As a result, I bounced on my seat every time I encountered them. There were times when I thought my car might come apart. The car stayed intact, but my nerves didn’t.
I approached Tumkur a little after 6:00 PM. Google Maps indicated that Pyramid Valley was about 100 kilometres away. A little over two hours not considering the traffic. But peak Bangalore traffic was unavoidable, which meant it would take me a lot more than two hours. I just didn’t know exactly how much more.
However, I had one more concern besides the peak traffic. Pyramid Valley’s reception office shuts at 7:30 PM. They had noted my booking without asking me to pay an advance amount, so I was a bit concerned that I may not get the room if I reached after the office closed. I pulled over to the side of the road to intimate them that I was running late. The person at the reception assured me that someone would be present near the room to give me the keys, regardless of when I arrived.
Relieved, I got back on the road. There’s only one phrase that can adequately describe the road from Tumkur to Bangalore: tollbooth galore (although if I remember correctly, those hideous booths started before Tumkur... somewhere between Chitradurga and Tumkur). I encountered one tollbooth after another at ridiculously short intervals.
Sometimes, my imagination runs wild, but I imagined that if people had to pay the toll with their clothes, everyone entering Bangalore from that highway would ultimately be in their birthday suits. I wondered if the last tollbooth sold clothes at a premium (*).
But, jokes apart, what was even worse was that there were hardly any lights on the road. I suppose the companies that collected the toll were under contract to maintain only the road (which was also in questionable condition), not the lights.
By now, the sun had almost set and dusk was receding into the darker end of the twilight spectrum.
I flipped on my car’s headlight.
Hmmm... I flipped it back off and on again. And a few more times.
What the @$%#?
Damn hell. I was on an ill-lit highway, at least over two hours away from my destination. It was dark, and the headlights weren’t working.
Previous Episode: A Sincere Student of the Menu
Next Episode: Pyramid Valley, Finally!
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