Wednesday, May 7, 2008

The art of pillion riding

At first there was no bike; then there was a bike and a rider and then somehow came the pillion rider. That was the start of chaos. -A random bike rider


Most of us would have been pillion rider at some point of our life. Haven't we? To never have been a pillion rider would mean to never have sat on a two wheeler. Or something more apt will be you never have wanted to sit on a two wheeler which you are not riding.

The need for someone to be a pillion rider arises from the simple fact that there has not been a bike which allows both the riders to ride. Prerequisites are a motorbike and two riders. My knowledge on motor cycles is very bleak. But I am very confident about the above mentioned fact. Only solution which I can think of is to have a bike which can be driven from both ends. Which would mean that we have to fit every bit of accesory twice.That sort of engineering defeats the purpose. Hence proved that there has to some one who has to be the pillion driver if the vehicle in question is a bike.

A pillion rider assumes a lot of responsibilities he neednt assume. He is like the cricketer who is wanting to be the next vice-captain of a team; hoping that something goes wrong with the skipper and he will be get control over decision making. He will end up overdoing a lot of things and will end up as a joke.

The pillion rider at times thinks that he owes the driver something in return. And he will use his amazing cognition of traffic rules and signals and prove that he will he is no mug with the traffic signals and will show a stop signal when the driver has the indicator signalling right and such minor slip ups which might lead to serious messup.

The pillion rider gets pissed of with every other vehicle that over takes the vehicle he is on. He gets irritated at every horn that get horned. At times he manages to give a glare or a stare at the driver who tries to overtake the bike, depending on the gender.

He is never short on words though. He will give lectures on the everything from the emerging market for futures trading in India to the degrading moral values among people who are younger to him. He will unleash his complaints on the roads, on the food he had, about the girl who didn’t smile at him as she does always and almost everything. He will manage to let in a few lewd comments here and there. All the driver has to do is to pretent that he is approving of all that he is hearing. Even if he is hearing nothing.

At times the pillion rider tries to behave as if he is at home. He will stretch his hands wide open. He will manage to do search for his mobile in his jeans pocket. He will afford to let out one or two yawns. At times he will try to get a nap with his head on the shoulder of the driver. He will try hard to make sure that the driver feels that he is uncomfortable.

Some random pillion driver, highly influenced by astrological revealings, was very particular about how he mounts the bike. He wanted to mount on the bike from the left side with his a free swing of the left leg. And he was very particular about that! We can see such people peeping right into the face of the vehicle thats behind them.

A certain pillion guy tried to cross all limits and tried to help the driver wear the helmet when the vehicle was moving at 70 kmph. He decided to slip the helmet over the face of the driver without letting the driver take the pain of putting it on. He almost succeeded in blinding the driver for a good ten seconds. The pair managed to survive with minor bruises.

Happy pillion riding, mates!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I wonder where the inspiration to this post came from...

any specifics?

Horatio said...

@ admiral
The pillion driver has been going unnoticed for a long long time.

And as one of them decided to talk!

Rakesh said...

nice observations...brilliantly written

Horatio said...

:)
grazie