Of ancient motorcycles and psycho doctors!

I’ve always been into doing things the “extreme” way and “living on the edge” and all that shit. Even as a little kid, while others my age were engrossed in wrestling and nascar and all that girly crap I used to watch roller jam…for the uninitiated roller jam is this totally awesome sport where beefy hunks and busty chicks, on roller blades, race against each other in a circular rink, quite frequently ramming into one another in an attempt to shove them off the playing area (Apparently you get points for doing so). Whatever it may be, it used to get pretty darn violent and I remember I enjoyed watching it. As a matter of fact I used to enjoy being a part of any thing that had the potential to be obscenely violent. My obsession with television violence bordering on insanity, my parents deemed it inordinately stupid to let me too close to anything that if used creatively could cause a lot of pain.

Now, let me tell you some thing about my uncle’s motorcycle. It is ANCIENT .The artifact has been passed on for so many generations that the original owner had long since been forgotten. The machine had been manufactured in some primeval era when the human skull was large enough to accommodate only so many brain cells that the thought of “braking” or “stopping” never occurred. Good for them, their cranial capacities were inadequate. They never thought of taking these contraptions out for a test-drive either. Lets just say, the human race would have become extinct that much earlier. Well so about the bike…my uncle was trying to get rid of it, and I was pretty certain that he knew that I knew that he wouldn’t be able to get shit for it if he tried selling it. I guess that’s why he let me have it for free. All I had to do in return was keep it in proper running condition. Well what did I have to lose? It sounded like a good bargain so I took it…. only to regret it later.

All was well for a couple of days, until I decided to take my recently inherited 17th century motorcycle out for a spin. As was wont to happen, despite all of my uncle’s warnings I forgot to get the brakes repaired. After a good 15 minutes and several wasted kicks later, I manage to get the infernal thing started. Deciding that brakes aren’t all that important for a motorcycle, I set out, throwing caution to the winds. As I entered the highway, I became ambitious. Wanting to see how fast she’d go, I opened her up. I managed to get the thing all the way up to 90,which was a great thing considering all those years of neglect the machine had been subjected to. The road was quite slippery owing to recent rains, but that did not matter. Feeling sublime and at peace, I closed my eyes. As most of you probably know, doing 90 on an ancient motorcycle with zero brakes, on wet road, with your eyes closed is suicidal. But all that TV violence had gone to my head rendered me completely brain dead and I was thoroughly enjoying it. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, something darted onto the middle of the road.

Some people say that the mongoose is an extremely elusive creature, very difficult to spot and capture. Hit him full on the face, going 90 kph with the headlights on and the horn blowing! OH YEAH! There’s your elusive creature! He must’ve been quite a mongoose, because upon impact I lost all semblance of control and instinctively tugged at the brakes. Nothing whatsoever happened. I could only watch helplessly as the bike careened off the road and raced toward a nearby thicket. I lost balance and fell off, as the bike caught in all the shrubbery, came to a standstill. But for a bruised toe, I was unhurt, thanks to all that protective blubber.

Well, a bruised toe wasn’t much so I didn’t worry about it a lot. Weeks passed, and my wound showed no sign of healing. It developed into a really painful blister that bled constantly. Unable to stand the pain any longer, I finally decided to pay the neighbourhood clinic a visit. Always, consult a specialist if you have the means. Because these so called “doctors”, who run these cheap dilapidated clinics, are completely psycho. I walked into the place only to see this guy in a very colorful ‘lungi’, smoking a beedi. He looked more like a rickshaw-puller than anything else. Naturally I assumed him to be the guy who cleaned the place to earn a little extra something.I asked him where the doctor was. With a totally homosexual simile, he gestured towards the seat next to him. With a sense of foreboding I sat down. I let him take a look at the wound. I swear to god, this guy was high on some local stuff because on seeing my swollen bloody toe he got all excited. “Ippo sheriakkitharam!”, he said and ran inside .He returned with an 8-inch long steel nail and started heating it over a spirit lamp. I was scared shit. No way, I was letting him stick that thing into me.. If he poked me with that, I’d sue him for attempted manslaughter! The thing was larger than a normal average human dick! (Well, not if you lived in Jamaica…). I opened my mouth to voice my thoughts but all I could manage was, “ Doctoreee…vedanikyoo???…”. “Oru urumbu kadikunna pole”, he responded with a particularly murderous grin. “Ready?”, he asked. I closed my eyes hoping I’d pass out before the worst of it.

It was pain beyond everything I had experienced before. I tried not to think of the words ‘searing’ and ‘flesh’ but try as I might, I could not blot out the bizarre image of an 8-inch nail sticking out of my toe. I craved for an analgesic, but my doctor had probably never heard of those. An agonizing 10 minutes later, I dragged my mutilated foot out of the clinic and hobbled home feeling very sorry for myself.

As I lay here in bed, with my leg even worse than before, I swear upon the graves of my ancestors, as soon as I get better I’m gonna shoot that son of a bitch…. well until then all i can do is, recount my story to everybody who’ll listen. : (