Pulee and the art of motorcar driving

A piece written before the blog. Thought of publishing since there hasn't been any momentum for some time

Of late I had the pleasure of being on the roads with Pulee. For the uninitiated Pulee( tiger ) is the recent avatar of a close buddy, and henceforth will be referred so. One moment he can be a Pulee giving funda on the intricacies of air flow in the carburetor and the next he would go ga-ga over the correlation between the mood of the artist and predominance of blue color in the frame. The long and short of it is that he can be a Pulee- in engines, mobiles, photography and all assorted techie stuff. He says that his biwi is also a Pulee and that they going to name their home "Pulee bhavanam" . But the biwi has not claimed to be a pulee and does not show any traces of puleness except when putting down the pulitharam of Mr. Puli.

This note is warranted in the context of the mail on driving experience forwarded by Pulee. Pulee feels that the entire road is his playground. The hapless drivers and who ply the highways are the villains. Pulee has many times expressed his intention to shoot the drivers point blank for such grave omissions as not giving him way when he honks repeatedly, not to mention the swearing at every lorry that he overtakes. Pulee would then give lectures of his psycho-game while overtaking where he would drive into the opposite vehicle and get the hapless oldie into submission while I would almost pee in my pants. ah before I forget another of his antics is to corner a truck out of the road if it fails to give way after repeated honking - begging, threatening and swearing. Pulee is conceptualizing a new protocol where one could express 4 letter words through the horn. 2 small for F***.1 long 1 short for AH etc.

Agreed that the Indian roads are in perpetual chaos and mayhem and the drivers need to be whipped on their butts. But where else could one enjoy such unobstructed freedom. One could shout, drive on either side of the road and do whatever nonsense that one could think of. Pulee himself narrated how a friend of his was screwed by the truck drivers when he tried to be smart in a US highway. They radioed all the nearby trucks and gave this fellow a run through the maze they set. Thank God our drivers are not that tech savy. otherwise pulee and me would never have made it home.

The final straw was when after the nth tuning of his work horse ( Maruthi 1000) pulee took to testing the performance. 3 guys on a motorcycle(as they often do , I have tried 4 once) decided to try their luck when they saw our man powering to 100. There was a nano second of braking, turning and shouting. The car stopped with a slight scratch on the front bumper and the alloy wheels. It was so fast that I didn't even get to feel the goose bumps that one normally gets in such situations. Thanks to our parents prayer's we escaped the ordeal at the police station and courts for killing 3 people.