If you ever had a bad motorcycle accident, what advice would you give to others?

I’ve had many close calls, and three accidents that could have been much worse if I was unlucky/less skilled. Here’s my advice, in (my) order of importance:

1. Do not overestimate your abilities. Start with the assumption that you’re absolutely incompetent, and work your way up from there. But do make sure you’re working on “working your way up”.
2. Do not ride when you are not at your mental best. Angry/tired/depressed/even overly happy! Anything that takes your mind off the road is a risk you take.
3. Do not overestimate your motorcycle’s abilities - especially when it comes to emergency braking/steering in adverse conditions.
4. Do not make assumptions about other road users. This is tricky in the UK, where most people do follow rules but are distracted/bored/inattentive instead, but having done most of my riding in India, where following the rules is a joke (most road users have never even heard the rules once in their life, and most truckers rely on alcohol to keep themselves awake on overnight long haul drives!) it’s basically what kept me alive.
5. Take every close call as a lesson. Take every accident as an even bigger lesson. Most close calls are a result of at least one of the 4 above. Most accidents, at least two of the 4 above. Dissect each incident, by yourself, with trusted riding buddies, on quora. Internalize it. Make sure it never happens again. And thank your stars you lived to see another day.
6. All the gear all the time. Motorcycle safety gear saves lives, reduces pain, and really is not uncomfortable/inconvienient/expensive when you get the right gear. All of my accidents where I sustained physical injury have been where I was not fully geared up, and where gear would have reduced my injury, and were on extremely short rides (within 1km of my destination!)

(posted this on Quora, but thought it was too valuable to leave off my blog :D)

phone free

I'm preparing to go phone-free. I'm already down to using my phone for about 10 minutes daily, and my phone's battery life is down to about 20 minutes on a full charge.

I could theoretically purchase a new phone, but why? I don't even use my phone much any more. Yes, I know, it's because I'm working from home, and basically at home 99% of the time, and I might change my mind and buy a phone once we're back to moving around again. Who knows?

I'll still have my mobile phone number for calls and texts (unfortunately, my landline is only used by cold-calling scammers), but I am planning to not use my phone for anything else that can't be done without it.

So:

No more Whatsapp (oh yeah!)

No more Instagram (yeah, why not?)

No more Signal (sorry, all of you who just switched. Telegram is better because it doesn't exclusively run on a phone)

Possibly no more Google maps (we did fine without it for decades, no?)

No more photos of my food (let's be honest, how many of you cared?)

I'll probably blog more. Probably.

the ice-cream fine

 i was riding through the outskits of navi mumbai, the bit where the urban sprawl starts giving way to semi-rural areas. i was riding alongside Apurva (or Unitechy as I'd usually call her), and we were "kinda" racing. it wasn't an all-out race (I was on Carly, she on her scooter :D) but we were trying to out-maoneuvre each other and get to a certain location quicker.

We came to an intersection where I decided to take a right turn, off the highway and through this village. Apurva continued straight on.

The narrow road (barely broad enough for two cars) through the village was lined with houses on either side, and quickly turned steeply uphill. I revved Carly with all my might, but she kept losing speed. As the slope steepened and the engine struggled more, my point of view began to change, forward and downward, until I could see from barely inches over the road. As the scenery rushed past me, the landscape changed abruptly. I was no longer racing uphill along a house-lined road, but through a flat marketplace. the raod was even narrower now (barely broad enough for a car to squeeze through between the stalls, if there were no people). The stalls weren't very densely packed though, and at one point they seemed to end. Instead, on both sides of the narrow road, there were white sheets of cloth hanging down on to the road. It was hard to tell if the sheets were hanging from stalls or some sort of structure, or off the heads of people - they almost had the appearance of flowing robes, uninterrupted from head till the floor. They were longer than required, and partly covered the road I was riding on.

I was conscious that I was riding way too fast for the conditions (despite having lost a significant amount of speed on the way up, that I somehow did not regain when the ground flattened). In fact, the sensory feeling was not so much riding as floating very close to the ground, moving at a good speed, with these robes stretching out across enough of the road to almost meet in the centre.

As I thought about slowing down, I heard a shout: "STOP! What are you doing here?"

I realized I must have broken some rule - was I going too fast? or was it some sort of pedestrian area?

As I stopped and dismounted, the surreal cloth-lined marketplace turned more normal, with stalls on either side, and my point of view shifted back to something more normal as well. I turned around to see a uniformed policeman, with another man in plainclothes.

I apologized for whatever rule I may have broken (I did not ask what rule it was), and explained that I was new to the area and was trying to avoid the traffic on the highway which was a few km away.

He said that's fine, but I would have to pay the fine any way.

The fine was I had to buy him and his associate an ice-cream.

I thought this was weird, but sure enough, the road had a stall right in the middle of it, right where we were (how did I not see it earlier? If I was riding fast I wouldn't have been able to avoid a very serious collision!). The road when around the stall and continued straight behind it, but seemed to branch off into very narrow passages between unkempt houses (almost like a shanty). So it was pretty much a dead end.

Without giving it much thought, I agreed to buy the ice-cream (for them and myself). They picked the cones: dark chocolate covered cones (covered on the outside and inside). I'm not sure how those cones were designed, but they would probably have been quite messy to hold as the chocolate covering ran all over the surface, with no uncovered surface to hold.

After they placed their orders, the lady at the counter turned to me. I was trying to pick my flavour of chocolate. There were two options: dark chocolate and chocolate with salted caramel. I was curious about the texture of both the varieties, so she let me hold the scoop and tease both the tubs pf ice cream to decide. I prefered the texture of the dark chocolate, as the salted caramel formed stretchy strands between the second variety of chocolate. While I was trying to decide, I noticed the lady at the counter was unlike the other peole around: while she spoke to the rest of the staff in fluent Marathi, she spoke to me in perfect English, without a trace of the accent most native Marathi speakers carry over to their English. She was also dressed very smartly - almost fancily, with a bit of make-up on too. Her appearance probably suited someone headed to a semi-formal function: traditional but not too elaborate. In contrast, her staff were dressed and looked like the villagers in all the other stalls in what was quite a busy market.

I made my choice, and she served the cone with the ice cream scoop in it, flat in a plastic tub. It was covered with a layer of chocolate sauce, and was to be eaten with a spoon. I now understood why the cone was completely covered with chocolate. I dug into my ice-cream, almost oblivious to the fact that the policeman and his plainclothes associate had walked away with their ice-creams. As I ate my ice-cream, I realized that if I ate a bit of cone with the ice-cream, there would be more cone than ice-cream.

About halfway through the ice-cream, I asked if I could get another scoop in the same tub to eat with the rest of the cone.

The lady responded that the cone comes with two scoops, but she didn't serve them together as they wouldn't fit well in the cone.

She directed one of the staff to give me another scoop.

As I walked back to the counter, I decided to pick the ice-cream with salted caramel for my second scoop.

I asked the man now at the counter if I could take the scoop out myself. I wanted to try to serve myself more of the caramel than the chocolate ice-cream, and I tried to scoop with a swirling motion. Before I laid the second scoop in the tub, I aranged the remains of my first scoop and the half cone still left. I then placed the tub at a point next to the counter where I could have all the available flavours in the background, and proceeded to click a photo using my phone. Instead of clicking a photo with the usual dimensions and cropping it for instagram, I swotched my phone to take photos in 1:1 and composed it carefully so I wouldn't need to crop it later.

As I put my phone away, I thought to myself that this was probably one of the better ice-creams I've ever had - this ice-cream fine had turned out to be a pleasant surprise!

And that's when I woke up.

20/20

 2020 was a strange year. started on a rather nice note - a ride across the UK, and then a week with Nickolai and Damian, with a few evenings out with other friends.

Back to Belfast, and we were already planning our next vacation: a trip to the Shetland isles for "Up Helly Aa", which is as far away from home I've ridden Vicki (our Honda ST1100) so far.

Back home, and we were already planning our next vacations: Amsterdam in April. Ameland in August (just realized they're all with A!). And to get a visa for both of them, Edinburgh in March.

Attended my first ever hackathon. Was a really energizing experience!

Obviously, Edinburgh in March was the only trip that actually happened.

One week later, we were working from home, and literally going crazy.

Cabin fever. Reading (books, Kindle, online). Streaming movies. Streaming music. Cooking. Eating. Drinking. A bit of blogging too.

At some point, we decided (or rather, realized) we were going overboard with the food, and our bodies and the bathroom scales were showing it.

Thus began the first notable achievement of 2020: our first "reset" diet. It worked for a couple of months. Our friends were surprised at the changes that were visible even in our photos. We enjoyed our new diet as well. We thought it was good enough to last for life.

Unfortunately, that was not to be.

By October, we were slipping up with regularity.

By November, I knew we had to "reset" again.

On Jan 1 2021 we were probably at the same state physically as we were on Jan 1 2020 - but with the experience to prove that it could be done quite easily.

That wasn't the only achievement of the year, of course.

I got back on board with Android development. Dabbled a bit with a few other programming languages.

Signed up for a COVID-19 vaccine trial.

A few day trips, which picked up towards the end of the year, when we realized COVID-19 isn't going anywhere soon, and we're going to have to make the best of the free time we have instead of planning vaactions.

A bit of hiking, which again picked up towards the end of the year.

A lot of video calls.

A lot of using grocery shopping as an excuse to get out of these four walls.

A lot of chat as a substitute for human contact.

A lot of mindless scrolling.

ONE lockdown vacation to Galway, when it actually seemed like Ireland and the UK were past COVID-19.

Lots of conversations with Shruti.

Lots of things to look forward to for 2021.

And above everything else, the realization that all assumptions about the future are pointless.

the point of it all

 it's the second half of december 2020. the end of a rather different year. but also a year that has forced a lot of people to change the way they live their lives fundamentally.

and for some people, forced them to strip away a lot of the things that they got a lot of day-to-day pleasure from, possibly without really being conscious of the fact.

in fact, for most of us, 2020 and the associated restrictions has reduced our existence to the equivalent of "treading water" - just doing what we can to stay afloat.

which is fine, and probably even good - the personal equivalent of "gardening leave", that most people (including myself) would not experience unless forced to. some people took the opportunity to get fit(ter), others to take up new hobbies, and the few i'm envious of, actually took up creative pursuits that have borne fruit, like nickolai's book and grenville's album.

personally, i dabbled in a bit of android development, and am also brusing up my javascript skills.

but honestly, 9 months of "treading water" later (in fact, not that much later - maybe even as early as june?) i wonder how people who do not have such direction, get themselves out of bed every morning.

most people (myself included) have to focus on feeding themselves, literally and metaphorically.

many others with kids, have to focus on their development and future - the unique challenges and opportunities being locked indoors with their little future selves almost 24x7 present.

some people (the single, retired, those not living with family due to work etc) have to deal with the loneliness of it all.

of all these different aspects of being "locked down", the one that strikes me the most are the retired. because they represent our eventual future (except for those who hope to work till their dying breath, i guess - but even such hopes do not really turn into reality as intended).

one of my personal goals is to be at a point where i can live comfortably off my savings/investments, with a roof over my head, food on the table, and the level of luxury i find comfortable. if/when we have kids, enough money to guarantee their basic security as well (does the list ever end?). at that point i'd be more free to pursue things other than work for money's sake. because while my current work does give me some personal fulfilment (in other words, i don't detest my job :D) i know there are things i'd rather do, but they don't have the stability/income level to achieve my long term goals.

so that's work and money. but there's more to life. even with 8 hours of work, i always had plenty of time to do other things (even after vegetating on the couch just to "recover" from work). what I do with my free time now probably predicts what I would do with it if i was "free" 24x7. there's obviously entertainment: ther'es a lot of good movies and music out there. as i love to say about movies: "life is too short for reruns". but when it comes to music, i'm happiest listening to my favouites over and over again (yes, i have a lot of favourite music!). but either way, it's entertainment. about as fulfilling as a good meal cooked and eaten by myself, or with shruti. maybe a good drink to go with it.

but after a certain point, all of these things that feel good, do not give me that extra something to keep going. hiking, cycling, riding the motorcycle all help postpone that empty feeling a bit. but beyond a point, it's inevitable.

so, what then?

there's obviously charity. helping others not as well as myself in different aspects. and then there's something that's not so much "charity" as "networking" - helping others simplify/solve their problems.

but is that it? helping friends/acquaintances/charity network?

and what happens when i'm too old to do that? when i start feeling like i've helped all i can and am now being helped more than i'm helping? when my own knowledge is so far behind the times that my advice is more of a waste of everyone's time?

I can see it happening to a few people around me.

i'm trying to motivate them to do something to keep themselves active, mentally and physically. but as i try no motivate them, i can't help asking myself: why? and does what i'm asking them to do even make sense to them? they make sense to me, because i'm preparing myself for the rest of my life. for the things i want to do in the future. but what about when that list is empty? do i go about filling it for the sake of having things to do, although the only reason i'm doing them is to just keep going?

and if not, what?

we prepare ourselves for the end of our lives, but what happens when all of that preparation seems pointless?

i know some retired people don't feel the way i have just described. they busy themselves with their grandkids, books, or just slowing down and letting their daily routine fill their lives.

is that the point of it all? is that what i'm preparing myself for?

the afterlife

 humanity was dying. it was being killed off by an unidentified condition.

the world seemed green and natural, greener than it usually would be. not green as if nature overgrew human creations, but green and natural as if human creations somehow vanished without a trace, and nature sprung back up as if humans and their creations never existed. the weather seemed temperate and pleasant, and it was sunny and clear, but not scorchingly so.

the last few humans were on a train. it was a strange train - just a single coach. it had the capability to be attached to other coaches, but it was not. it didn't even have an engine attached to it. just a coach, by itself.

the train/coach ran on tracks across rolling green grasslands, with gentle hills on both sides, patches of trees here and there. it didn't run so much as roll at a leisurely pace. almost like it was rolling with its own momentum, down a slope so gentle as to be imperceptible to the observer.

the coach seemed like it was designed mostly for standing room, with just one row of seats along each side, facing inward. there were windows, and they were sealed off with class panes. but there were no doors. it did have a psssage at both ends to allow movement between coaches if they were connected, but since there weren't any, the passages were sealed off. there weren't many people on the coach, but it wasn't empty either. they were all seated along its length. they were not shoulder to shoulder - there were plenty of vacant seats, and they weren't clustered or consciously uniformly distributed either. they were just sitting randomly. the people on the train were silent. they did not attempt to interact with each other in any way. they were static, but not catatonic. there were all grown men and women, but no children. none of them seemed particularly old either. they were all dressed quite uniformly, in charcoal grey jackets that seemed quite heavy, and otherwise quite nondescript clothing.

the coach rolled along its solitary tracks, until it slowed, and stopped. not abruptly, as if brakes were applied, but quite gently, yet distinctly - at one moment it was moving and at the very next, it was not.

as soon as it stopped, everyone in the coach stood and turned to face the direction the train was previously moving.

i was not on the coach, but i could see it all, as if the walls existed and were visible, yet somehow transparent.

the humans on the train were distinct from myself, and though they did not make a sound, as they stood and turned forward, i could feel what they felt: this is the end of the line.

their feelings felt strange. they were not feelings translated into words, but feelings themselves. as if i was somehow connected to them, and i could feel what they felt. they felt a blank, black sadness. they felt like it was over. that it was not their personal responsibility that things had come to this point, but that they were still part of whatever brought them here. 

they were oblivious to the beauty of nature around them. they did not feel like they had to get out of that train and survive, or do something. they just felt that it was the end.

they started marching towards the end of the coach, even though there was no door there - just he closed off passage that would normally link to the next coach if one was attached.

their feelings began to dissolve. i lost focus of their feelings.

that's when i realized i had no physical form myself.

i had no physical location either. i was free to localise myself to wherever it pleased me. i did not have to move to localise myself elsewhere.

i was everywhere. i localised myself somewhere far above the earth. i could view its expanse, but also see beyond to the darkness of space. the brilliance of this blue-green earth (now more blue than green) and streaked with silvery white (i assume those were clouds).

i was aware of many beings within myself. they all had their own feelings. but i couldn't locate any thoughts or words. it was some sort of non-uniform, pulsating (but not regularly pulsating) contiguous mass of souls. i could not tell if they were human or animal, but they probably weren't plants, as plants seemed quite distinct from the swirling mass of feelings i was a part of. i felt feelings of these beings the same way as i felt those of the last few people on the train before i lost focus. that is, i felt them distinctly from my own, and distinctly from each other. none of these beings seemed to be located specifically either - they all seemed to be everywhere and without physical location or presence.

i had no significant feelings of my own. i just existed, in a neutral, timeless sort of way. the feelings of all other beings diverged or merged with mine depending on whether i focused on them or not. but no feeling stood out noticeably. they were not as dark as the feelings of those in the train though.

while these beings were timeless, the earth did seem to be bound by the normal laws of time and physics - it was spinning, moving. since i was quite timeless i could percieve its spin as quickly or slowly as i pleased.

and at that point, i woke up.

shruti asked me if i had been dreaming.

i told her the bit about the feelings and beings.

she told me that's what some people perceive the afterlife to be.

crazy coincidences

nothing like being locked in for most of a year with one person to think about the connections that brought you together... and then kept you together.

i don't know if i'm an outlier or everyone else's story is like mine, but here's tracing the story of shruti and myself, through all the chance connections that brought us together.

tl;dr: i probably wouldn't be married to shruti today if my mom hadn't cold called the owner of a computer institute in may 2001.

first of all, it's weird that though shruti and i have lived within 1 mile of each other since about 1987, we only met in late 2014. and we did not have any close mutual friends when we met. i knew her school classmates, but they didn't know her. none of her school friends knew me. i probably had school classmates who knew her, but i didn't/don't know them well enough to know. until the day we met, we never hung out at the same places, ever!

so...tracing backward. shruti and i met on a hike/camping trip in november 2014. the hike was planned by "adventure lovers", a group of outdoor-loving folks based in mumbai.

shruti was introduced to the group by a friend ashok a couple of months earlier. after she was introduced to the group, we planned many hikes, but all of them were canceled - until the one where we met, which was her first hike with the group.

ashok was introduced to the group by me, because we were planning a 19 day motorcycle trip in july 2014, and he wanted to come along. he was involved in the planning - but canceled about a month before the trip was finalized. he stuck with the group though, and as far as i know, has attended only one hike with adventore lovers - the one where shruti and i met. 

i knew ashok from well before "adventure lovers" - more on that later.

as for adventure lovers itself, its formation is another story. i was out clubbing one friday night in february 2014, and didn't check my messages for a few hours. when i got home and checked my phone, there was a message from joylyn. joylyn said that a bunch of her friends were planning a hike on saturday, and she was wondering if i'd be interested. i was so interested i called her at 3am, because i had no idea what time on saturday they were planning to leave, and didn't want to risk missing it by finding out too late. turns out they planned it for saturday night, not morning. joylyn hated the hike-turned-trek so much that i don't think she ever came for one with us ever again. the rest of us guys (salman, amey, abhinav and myself) on the other hand got along so well that we founded "adventure lovers". before that message, joylyn and i have never really chatted much or hung out together, except with marjorie - that's how i know her, and how she landed up on my facebook. how do i know marjorie? that's another strange set of coincidences. 

anyway, chronologically, the next person whose "story" comes up is ashok. ashok and i have known each other for many years, through multiple mutual friends. all those friends have one thing in common: they used to work together at "3" in malad, in 2007 or thereabouts. I didn't know any of them at that time, even though i was working in the next building in 2007! however i got to know a couple of guys from that group quite closely much later. one of them is jude. jude and i were hiking up lohagad with a bunch of friends, when ashok was hiking down lohagad with another bunch of friends. and they bumped into each other, and jude introduced me to ashok.

how do i know jude? jude and i met at a friend's birthday party, sometime in 2010 or 2011 i think. that friend is brandt. brandt and i have known each other since about 2001, more on that later. but while we knew each other for many years, we never had any common friends for some reason. however, that birthday, brandt's friend cleona decided to throw him a surprise party at a restaurant near home. but she didn't know me. however, brandt had mentioned me multiple times in the past, and cleona was in touch with my brother, and that's how i got invited to the birthday party. we got along so well that jude planned a motorcycle ride with the rest of his riding buddies. that's the one where i met ashok.

the other connection with ashok is through nickolai. i don't remember the specifics of that connection, but she definitely mentioned that i should meet him as we're both like minded riders/travelers/free spirits :D and nickolai and i were close enough for her to be able to tell when two of her good friends would get along great ;)

i met nickolai in december 2007. just shy of 13 years ago. how i met her is another strange story: we were on this social website called "orkut" (anyone remember that one?), and there was a small "group" on orkut for people who lived nearby. after a few months on that community, we decided to meet up. about 10 of us met in the area for a short walk, hung out in a park nearby, and then went home. nickolai missed that meet-up though, because she saw the messages late or something. so we swapped numbers and agreed that i will call her and let her know the next time the group meets up... which they never did. but nickolai and i got talking and we got along so well that she's been my bestie ever since. and the strangest thing is that we've lived our entire lives before about one block away, and though we had common friends that neither of us were close to, we never met or even found each other familiar when we did meet.

i met marjorie somewhere in the first half of 2007. marjorie traveled to pune to meet me (I was doing my internship there, and i used to spend the week in pune, and travel back to mumbai every weekend). that was, if i remember correctly, one of maybe two or three weekends i didn't travel back to mumbai. i didn't travel back because marjorie was headed to pune. for a funeral, i think. it was something dramatic like that, and marjorie wasn't sure if she should head all the way to pune for it - but i convinced her she should. until that day marjorie and i had never met in person. we had only chatted on the phone.

marjorie had taken my phone number from brandt. marjorie's computer had stopped working. and brandt said i was the only person who might be able to help her fix it just on the phone. and yes, i was able to tell her how to fix it on the phone. if i remember correctly, she had to take out the RAM, clean the contacts, and fit it back in. she was so grateful that she promised me dessert at the place of my choice. i still don't remember what the dessert of my choice was, or where i wanted it from - becasue i never collected it. anyway, marjorie and i ended up besties.

and so, finally: jude and marjorie both lead to brand. how did i meet brandt? brandt and i were coworkers at a summer job. this was 2001, and we were both working at a computer institute during our summer vacations. i was their youngest computer instructor (a shade under 17 years), and brandt was in charge of marketing and sales. we were both based out of the branch of the institute that had recently opened, and for the most part, were the only employees there.

i don't know how brandt got that job, but i remember how i got mine: i was whiling away my summer vacations, and mom thought it's time i got myself a summer job. she knew i loved working with computers. so after sunday church, when she was handed a flyer advertising a new computer institute in the area, she called them and asked if they needed an instructor. if i remember correctly, i got the job without an interview.

tl;dr: i probably wouldn't be married to shruti today if my mom hadn't cold called the owner of a computer institute in may 2001.