BUGGY DAY

That was one special day of my life. It’s been some time but it’s still very fresh like a virgin thought in my mind. So for the special day and to all the special people who made that special day happen, here it is….

The flag was waved. I pressed the pedal with a gentle touch with anxiety and fear within. The whole world came to a standstill except for a few cars of my fellow rivals.  There was a rush of blood and adrenaline through my veins. Mind distances itself from the surroundings. As a matter of fact, even the ones I am supposed to do voluntarily become involuntary. Legs moving on its own command, hands are rotating all by it, eyes start capturing and forecasting through my optic nerve. All these are happening and much of it is happening as if when a person is in a coma state.

A couple of seconds pass by, things start getting digested finely and the villi start taking up the nutrients in bits and pieces. So I slowly started fitting into my seat. The fear of yet another failure was always looming at the back of my mind. This in turn showed up in my slow start at the beginning of the race. The psychological fear did not allow my foot to press the acc peddle to metal.  But contrary to it, all my competitors were zooming past me and I was doing the opposite.

But a slow start is a slow start and I ended up being the tail Enders. Amidst my settling down to the situation, a fear started to creep within me of not being among the front runners. One part of my brain was screaming to the other “It’s a race u dumb head, now or never”, so the reply “slow and steady wins the race”.

Then I realized slow and steady will take me nowhere and I need to up the stake, so started pressing the acc pedal more and more. I started to go faster on the curves, brake later and later, slid the buggy across the curves, got mud splashing of the tires, better tuned my senses, got more fuel burnt and crawled up the position board.

So by now every other buddy on the car had also started to kick the dust and it was becoming a hotter and tighter situation to be in. I loved every moment of it but did not have much time to relish it. In all this dust and chaos, one or two cars could not take so much beating, gave up on its driver and stalled on the sidelines of the main racing track. Suddenly there was a frantic movement of people towards the stalled buggies to perform makeshift repairs and make the cars moving. The sight of it suddenly brought me back haunting thoughts about a failure. But a sight on the race track with zooming cars kept my race consciousness intact.

When all things like my buggy, my mind were working well like a well oiled combo and working in great sync, all of a sudden a small problem started creeping up my buggy and I started realizing the intensity of it increasing every second. This was the time when I was making the dash for the podium, trying to push my car and my body and I realized I am in this situation. It was disheartening. I could have pushed my vehicle with that problem but realized that the engine might not last if continued.

 The problem was that the throttle was stuck and hampering the working of engine and my driving of the vehicle. Then I realized that it was happening because my acc pedal was bent and not allowing the throttle wire to go back to its idle position. So I had to decide whether to keep racing and end up not finishing or make a stop; get it corrected and complete the race but mostly not in the top. I choose to stop. My teammates came running towards me and started panicking. I then had to explain them the problem; make them understand it and finally got it corrected. Every passing second was like passing a light year. The situation was like a ticking time bomb. The value of time was immensely felt.

So it was back to pure racing and hoping that the problem won’t creep up again. I had lost a couple of positions to my competitors, so it was payback time now. I totally got into the groove of racing, so did everyone who was racing around me.  Lap after lap things started to look better. I went up the ladder; a few positions by one to one real racing and a few positions because my car held up and my rival’s cars gave up.

Luck and hard driving put me in a good position and to be more specific I was in second position trailing just one car. That was the good part but the bad part was that he was too ahead of me and it was tough to catch up with him. To top it off, the bent acc pedal was not holding up completely and was getting bent from time to time. This forced me to stop by and get it corrected from my fellow mates. This was simply lengthening the gap between me and the car ahead of me and eating away the lead from the car behind me. 

I used to stop and start but things went on from there. The race was coming to the final stages; just a few remaining laps so all my focus was onto holding my position and pushing till the end. But then came a situation when the leader of the pack was about to overlap me. It just infuriated me to the brim. He did sneak past me and I just could not bear it, so I made this serious move on him and squeezed my buggy past him. I still remember that particular moment when I made that bold move which could have had consequences.

That move I made was on a curve was almost like a U turn at the start of the track. I carried my pace into the corner; braked late; got my buggy sliding just a few inches away from the other buggy. The suspension and brake setup on my buggy made the back of my buggy slide sideways and just provide me the space to overtake him again. This move scared my fellow mates who came screaming past the pit lane to yell at me to slow down and try finishing the race rather that than hamper the entire race in the last leg of it just to satisfy my egoistic thirst. It also scared me once I realized what I had done in the heat of the moment. But by good grace, it just ended as a spectacular racing moment and not a spectacular racing disaster.

All in all, did complete the remaining laps relishing every second of it. The checkered flag was waved and the big race had come to an end. I slowed down and stopped my buggy close to my team mates who were waiting impatiently to receive me. I made a final confirmation on the final standings and found out that we had indeed ended up in second position.  

There was complete jubilancy in the air with screams &howling filling up the place. I was still soaking up the moment when my team mates lifted me up in the air announcing loudly to everyone around that we have finished and arrived on the podium. It was such a delight!

In between all the hustle, news reporters and cameraman of a couple of news channel had squeezed past and started bombarding me with questions like how was it? How does it feel? Etc etc. I was speechless. I never used to understand how people get speechless like when somebody received an Oscar for example. But that was the time I realized how a person could go speechless without able to utter any word even though he has a million things in his mind which he would want to shoot of his mouth like a typhoon.

We had won 30000 rs as the prize money but it was just making no value to the feat we had achieved for ourselves. It was the day when we had quenched our inner lust; answered a billion unanswered questions; made people around us happy. It was an answer to all our hardship which we had put to bring the buggy to where it was today. The entire buggy days just swept past our little minds like a flash. I have had such a colossal experience that even today, I can architecture every moment of the race in front of my eyes. Unbelievable…!

Thank you to all those people who made it happen.                                                                                                    

Cheers to Team Stratos .!