I had the most amazing weekend, despite the fact that I opted to shy away from company and sulk because it was going to be the first weekend in a long time that I wouldn’t be in Unawatuna. But to get to my present story, I need to give you a background about me and how significant parts of my life have involved motorbikes. From the time I was but a wee embryo in my mama’s womb infact!
When my parents first got married they went about on a bike. And I don’t just mean to work and back and the usual places one goes about to when living in Colombo. For instance, when my mum was 7 months pregnant with me, she and my dad and a bunch of other couples when on a road trip around Sri Lanka. I’ve seen the yellowing photographs to prove it, the ones with my parents and bikes and historical sites all thrown in. My mother of course, with a giant tummy to boot. It kinda explains some of the insanity in my system now. I must have been pretty shook up, huh? 😉
Then as a baby, my parents found it very difficult to put me to sleep. I would howl or just gaze at them, refusing to get any shut-eye or give them any. Like most parents, mine found the precise thing to get me to finally knock off. You know how some kids need to hear a specific song to fall asleep? A cousin of mine needed to listen to “I’m nobody’s child” over and over again before she reached dreamland. With me, it was nothing quite so simple. The only way to put me to sleep was to wrap me up, put me on the bike and take me for a half an hour spin in the dead of night. I’d knock off like a dead man, feeling more comfortable over the engine of a bike than my comfy little cot at home. Strange child I was. Still a strange child at times. It all makes sense now though.
The longest relationship of my life was also with a man who rode a bike in the early stages of it. I remember him dropping me home late at night as we’d whiz past the lonely lanes between Dehiwala and Nawinna way past midnight. It was just the two of us on the bike, but I used to always see a third shadow when I’d look down on the streets to follow the shadow of the bike as we passed street lamps. When I told him about it one day, he didn’t even wince. Told me that bikers have a special guardian angel which was probably what I saw.
And then tragedy struck. You know the cousin in whose memory I write a post at the end of February every year? He was a dirt bike racer who met with a nasty accident on a street bike. He had never met with a single accident whilst racing and then he headed off onto the streets one day to test his new baby. The gory details aren’t necessary. Needless to say, he died on the spot. And for years after that I couldn’t even look at a bike, forbidding the people I loved to never go near one. When I finally was ready to get back on a bike again, I think I felt him smiling down at me.
Now that I’ve set the stage, I’m ready to tell my present story…
I wanted nothing but to stay home and sulk with a book this weekend. And then the one friend who I just couldn’t refuse called and asked if we could have a beer. He picked me up on his bike and we headed to BuBa. I was fine with it, thinking it’d last an hour at the most. When we were done, he just got up and declared the night to still be young and asked what we could do. Jokingly I said, let’s go to Unawatuna.
There obviously seemed to be no two words about it with him and before I knew it, we were riding “into the night”, cutting through the cold air, heading towards Unawatuna. I couldn’t half believe it during most of the journey. I kept telling myself that I was asleep in my bed and having the nicest of dreams. The other half of the time, I kept remembering my promise of taking a walk on the wild side. This must have been one of the wildest things I’d done in a while.
You see, I randomly make wild suggestions like this when I’m with my friends and none of them take the bait. This friend and I certified ourselves to be the last two crazies left in the world. He was the first person to take my cockamamie schemes seriously. But then again, he always had and I think I’ve always done the same. It had been a while since we’d really hung out together. Over the years our lives have taken us in such different directions that we don’t get to spend as much time together as we used to. Doesn’t mean that we aren’t still there for eachother. And that night proved just how in synch we still are with eachother, even after all these years. We’d hand out in groups or get together for a casual beer once in a while, but that had been it.
And then it began to rain. Soaked to the bone, we took shelter under whatever we could find on lonely roads, past 1 in the morning. Stopped occasionally for a smoke. Spoke to eachother whilst riding. Froze our faces with the cold, cold air that seemed to be slapping us as we sped on. It’s not like travelling in a car, I realized. You don’t just get to see everything, you get to feel everything this way too. We stopped for Kottu just before Boosa. Even something as simple kottu tastes better when the company rocks, I think. In my head a soundtrack started to form. The Beatles were singing Ticket to Ride. And then The Doors were playing Riders on the Storm. Even Amanda Marshall wanted her share, so she came in with her song, Ride. And then my beloved Smashing Pumpkins started to croon Tonight, Tonight. Simply perfect I tell you!
We got to Unawatuna, discovered nothing was open and headed onto the beach in front of the Happy Banana. My happy place, after all. When it started to rain, we took shelter inside the restaurant. I was confident no one would mind, considering the people who run it have now become my friends. We sat on the stone-walled ledge and had the most amazing conversation that lasted for hours. Two stray dogs that had made friends with me on my previous visits decided to curl up with us and enjoy our warmth while the rain was beating down on us. Our conversation seemed to follow the pattern of the rain; non-stop then stilted and then jabbering again and finally silence as we just listened to the rain cease and the waves take over the majority of the sound. We remembered songs we used to listen to and relate to. Crash & Burn. A song that reminded me that it was ok to cry. Bring me to life. A song that I held close to my heart like a promise, only to realize that it had come true at some point. Unwell. A song that brought back the madness I had given into at one point in my life, knowing it was the best thing that ever happened. We talked about the old days and in my head I remembered what Niobe constantly kept repeating in The Matrix… something along the lines of some things change and some things always stay the same. Before we knew it, day break was upon us and I got to gaze at that amazing view once again, this weekend too.
We rode back, singing the strangest songs, he changing the words to compliment our little adventure. We stopped for inguru plain tea just outside Beruwala and listened to a radio announcement that peace was nearly upon us. I smiled somewhere deep inside my heart. I had already found peace just passed midnight, somewhere on a lonely stretch of road, to the sound of a bike engine, with probably the best company in the world. Someone so intrinsically like me and yet so different in some ways that the combination was perfect for a night like we had.
I needed an adventure to shake up my soul a bit. This May madness was getting a bit too much to handle. And who better to shake up my soul and share a perfect moment with me than the person who inspired the name of this blog?
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