Passage To Home, The Push Of A Lifetime :P

This post of a satirical take on the recently concluded bike trip to Ladakh, ( Passage to Ladakh, The Ride Of A Lifetime.) with the similar sounding title.

2 weeks of riding in one of the most inhospitable terrains in the world in our humble 2 wheelers and I had pretty much envisioned all sort of worst case scenarios. Puncture's, snapping of clutch wires, getting stranded in snow, rear wheel coming off during the ride, the engine exploding and so forth (U should at least get a hint of what I was expecting :P) and with the greatest fear of getting stranded in some remote location till eternity. But thankfully nothing of such sort really happened and in the end we had nothing more than a few punctures and a clogged carburetor ( in other bikes of course), a very tame scenario when compared to my so called 'Deja Vu' visions and not a scratch on my Pulsar 180, which came out with flying colors.

But an incident back home here in Bangalore put a huge full-stop on the invincible status of my bike.

The Day:
30 September 2011

The Time:
10 pm Onwards

The Event:
Heavy downpour over the city of Bangalore.

I was returning late from office thanks to attending college in morning and then all of a sudden it starts to rain cats and dogs. Since I am the sort of person who likes to ride in the rain, I continued riding after getting some sort of protection for the electronics with me. But as I neared Lalbagh there was a big rain water pool in the middle of the road. Rode through this carefully and was successful in crossing it. But the problem were to descend upon me only after crossing this. Suddenly the engine was dying , sputtering to a stop. I guessed water must have entered the engine and after waiting for some 5 min in the heavy downpour tried to start it again. Still no response. Now the actual gravity of the situation dawned upon me. I was still around 8kms from my home.

First solution that came to my mind was to ditch the bike, get some transport to home and come back the next day for the bike. But thanks to heavy rain and time being post 10 pm there were literally no public transport or auto's plying on the roads. Now I was left to fend for myself. This is something which I had never imagined even in my worst nightmare , getting stranded within one's own city, just 8 kms from home :P. Anyway since having no other option decided to walk the remaining distance and quite wrongly assumed pushing the bike all the distance wont be problem too. So started the push of epic proportions, in a heavy downpour, almost nearing midnight, with the entire road pretty much deserted and occasionally dogs coming out of their shelter to bark at me and go back.

There were pretty huge inclines to climb and pushing the bike is surely a killer combo. The majority of the roads were filled with knee deep water and vehicles passing by were just splashing it left and right, pretty much no place for me to hide :P. And as expected within reaching half of the distance I was gasping for breath, as if I had run a marathon. But surprisingly (when I look back at what I did) I didn't give up pushing the bike. The primary reason being since I had already pushed half a distance and it would make no sense to ditch it after going through all the pain of pushing all this distance (glass half full concept :P). Finally reached home and flashed a "V" sign when my worried mom opened the doors :). "TASK COMPLETED !!!!!". (Took 1.5hrs for the 8 km dash :P )

After this incident I have truly come to the accept the fact that when the luck of the person is favorable, then it doesn't matter if he is in the remotest corner of the world, or among the deadliest people he will come out without a scratch, but if it is not favorable then the garden of Eden surely transforms itself to hell as it did for Adam & Eve and so did it for me. Luck is a bi**h  :P.

P.S. Anyway it was a great workout and a super-duper confidence booster having pushed the bike for 8 kms :P.

The Alpha Dog

Recently read an article in "The Week" magazine about how a male of any species can be divided predominantly into 3 categories (these categories are also present in females if not that transparent as in males). Even though this type of demarcation is clearly visible in animals when compared to humans , they have nevertheless mentioned the categories as follows.

1. Alpha
2. Beta
3. Omega

Alpha males are the born leaders, aggressive and other member of the same species literally follow whatever the alpha does. Talking in human terms they are the athletes, world leaders (except our PM :P, who by the way is an omega), army captains etc with testosterone levels running like rivers in their bloods. Of course too many alpha males and world will go into chaos :P. Beta males are the "wannabe" alpha's , but don't have in them to become the alpha. They are in constant competition with the alpha for supremacy , but as expected always end up loosing.

Omega males are the least aggressive of the species. Generally they follow others and keep a very low profile. Talking in human context they are geeks, mama's boys, shy and introvert people. They need others to take care of them, initially their mothers and later by their GFs/wife.High degree of accommodating other types of males, whether its an alpha, beta or omega types. Quite interestingly all these characters were portrayed in the movie UP  where the pack of dogs were clearly demarcated, which somehow dawned upon me after reading this article. The doberman is the alpha dog and not surprisingly named as Alpha, the leader no matter whether his intentions are good or bad. All of alpha dog's followers are beta dogs and again unsurprisingly one of these beta dogs is named Beta. The dog named Dug fits into the omega category, sissy, inefficient and bullied by others, with a constant companion being the 'cone of shame' :P.

Alpha and 2 Beta dogs- From "Up" Movie

Omega Dog-From "Up" Movie

 Also it got me thinking  as to what exactly I am i.e. what category I belong to?. After going back my memory archives, replaying and reviewing several instances, with pretty much my entire life being played before my eyes(black and white videos :P) I have come to a conclusion that I don't just belong to one specific category. There were times when I have shown traits of pure "alpha"ness and in majority of the cases being an omega, but quite surprisingly never a beta.The reason being , whenever I get the feeling that I cannot dominate, I pretty much go to the omega phase, skipping the beta category altogether. Overall considering all the instances of my life and with some amount of approximation I can deduce that the % of me being an alpha and omega is around 35 % and 65 % respectively.

So what does that mean. Is this sort of flip-flop possible only in humans, and I pretty much guess so. In animals an alpha to an omega transformation would surely result in it loosing the top position , usually being the head of the pack. Hence its pretty much like "Macho-ness Unlimited" :P. But in case of humans beings having the traits of an alpha male pretty much doesn't guarantee the top job. Also in case of humans we have something else which comes into play and which being much more powerful than the macho-ness. ie our brains, thinking power (intelligence quotient), intellectual capability, emotional quotient and so forth , making it a very complex affair. Nevertheless cases where alpha males marry/date an alpha female is a sure-shot recipe to disaster thanks to frequent ego clashes and battle for supremacy, whereas an omega man will be more than happy to be taken care and told what exactly to do by an alpha female and vice verse. Hence the phrase "Opposites Attract" surely finds its true meaning here :).

Furthermore the easiest way to go from Omega phase to Alpha phase in humans is without any doubt "sports". Any physical form of sports you take and within a matter of minutes aggression is dripping from the person's mouth. Enough of my personal analysis. Now lets see where the readers of this blog belong to :)