"1 MORE MINUTE!!! Let's go Ashish Ranjan!! is this what black belts are made of!?!", Shouted my Kickboxing instructor as the clock said 7:59 p.m. After a grueling 20 minutes of warm-up that seemed more like a burndown, after five-five minutes round on heavy bag and rehearsing jab-straight-body Kick combo for dozens of times, my coach had me on my butt with my legs raised in the air trying to lift my upper body. I had done thousands of crunches on daily basis back in the day when I was in college but still, every sit up in this position burnt my lower belly into the superheated state. Drenched in sweat, I was just hoping that none of the other 10 wanna-be mixed martial artists don't stop either otherwise the clock restarts. "O.K.!! TEN.....NINE....EIGHT...Keep going guys!!" pain whipped away every problem in my life, I forgot about how I'm going to sustain this seminar thing I'm working on, how to manage 3 youtube channels, how to shape my girlfriend's career, the pain was heavy enough for me to forget about the minor detail of life, the meaning of life boiled down to keep moving for 7 more seconds "FOUR.....THREE....TWO......ONE!! Ok, break guys, enough for the day, good job!!". Dehydrated as Las Vegas, I drank at least a liter of water in one stretch to feel human again, got downstairs to the parking lot, started my second hand scooty that I bought for Rs 18000, but had a good feeling that workout is over and today I'm going out with my girl to have good dinner. We planned on going for Mooch Madod, a place where they give pure desi style paratha, sized bigger than the biggest pizza you've seen, if you're wise you'll go for queen size and not the Emperor size but it was all well planned, after that extreme workout, I can eat a mountain.
"Ran you missed the turn, please go slow, I'm facing difficulty reading the map" she said, "Yeah ok.." and a bike crossed left of me, few micrometers away from my body, the way these fuckers drive their vehicles in this city is absolutely nuts, every time I drive here, I'm reminded of the movie World War-Z, you know that movie in which Brad Pitt is moving through the streets and then people start bashing into each other because there's an outbreak of Zombie Apocalypse and city goes out of control because nobody understands what's going on, that's Bangalore traffic all the time. I mean I grew up in Ranchi and my father always used to say that if you can drive in Ranchi, you can drive anywhere, granted my father never drove in Bangalore so obviously didn't know what he was talking about. "You've to turn right from here" she said, "OK fire, give me a right hand" this second hand scooty has its right indicator broken so every time I've to make a right turn. I remember back on Trivandrum, my friend had a scooty which had suspension issues because of which I could never go above 50km/hr otherwise most likely the back wheels would fly off. while driving that I was always frustrated the moment I used to hit 50 that here it come, the limit beyond which this junk ass scooty will disassemble. But my scooty was fine, no wobly rear wheel but because of the traffic in this city, I prefer riding under 40, in this traffic you should have zero expectations from others, because every now and then you'll find a suicidal num nut who wants to bash straight into you or want's to ride so close to you you can literally slap him. "Ran we had to turn left, drive slow, I'm unable to follow the map" "Oh, for god sakes, why don't you tell me few seconds before?!?!" lost my temper, an asshole move I know, granted following google maps which shits all the time is the worst task in this world. "Take the next left ran no issues", "Oh forget it, I'll take a u-turn and turn right!!" "There are cops up ahead, be careful" "So what? we haven't stolen anything!!" I said as took a right turn after I gave a right indicator switch, BAAMM!! I saw a Pulsar bike ramming straight into the right side of my scooty, it took me a few fraction of second to realize that I'm in a middle of an accident, you never know before it's gonna happen. I used my tall legs to avoid the scooty from tipping over, almost got it under control but the junkie on the bike didn't even go for the break, continued trying to kill us until the sooty tips over. After all these years of being in fights helped me remain calm in this awful situation, "Fucking indicator man, should have fixed it" I said it to myself. I immediately got up and looked back to check if fire is ok, she was on the ground holding her right ankle, in tremendous pain, tears were automatically running down her rosy red cheeks, all the unnecessary anger vanished, I looked at the man who was driving that pulsar and for an instant thought of kicking his ass right there for hurting my girlfriend but then I saw that she is having a hard time standing up, I picked her up and saw if she is able to put weight on her right ankle, she was able to do so but barely. "Try to rotate it" I said, trying to check if it's a bruise or the bones are broken, the motherfucker ran straight to her ankle. She was able to rotate it and was able to walk for few steps which means most likely it's not broken but it also means that there will be a blood clot, the primary cause to amplify that would be lack of oxygen. The first thing we tend to do in such a situation is to panic breath, which is just going to make the situation worse the next morning, I've had a fair share of the bruised ankle, heel, shin, wrist and knuckles and knew exactly what to do in such situations. "Deep breaths sweety, in from you know out from your mouth", the good thing about her is that she has this immense faith on me, she did exactly what I said while I rubbed her ankle mildly to cause blood flow in that region, all this would do is to reduce the swelling that we're going to see next morning. "Ahh...It hurts, don't do it", "little bit fire, little pain is necessary", I took a look on the left and already there was a crowd surrounding up, A lot of people were there minus the pulsar guy. "Can you rotate your leg?" woman with the mask asked, "Do you need help, I can drop you guys I have a car." a middle-aged concerned man said, "No no I'll take care of her no issues, thanks though" I replied with a smile.
