90% of introverts, the kind that don’t speak even when they have an opinion, are the most intelligent, nicest people you’ll ever meet. The rest 10% are psychopaths who’ll murder you and rape your dog, while calmly listening to Beethoven.
This particular morning I had the luxury of getting up late, which is a rather hard one to come by. Shreyas had left for office, and I pulled myself out of the bed shortly afterwards. Aditya Phadke of Motonomous wanted to meet up, so we planned to be at some shop at some time early afternoon. Aditya is a hardcore RE guy, and I didn’t really know what he expected from our conversations, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my travels, it’s to never give up a chance to meet someone new, especially if they don’t agree with you.
After the inaugural sutta outside, me, Aditya and a friend of his put ourselves inside the shop and ordered some stuff. For some reason, Aditya wanted to record what I spoke, so I ended up holding a phone to my lips for the better part of an hour. I don’t remember much of what I said, speaking is such a waste of time. But then someone has to, or we’d all be staring blankly at each other, misunderstanding everything that’s not being said.
My mind was preoccupied by the shitload of stuff that I had to carry from Mumbai back to Hyderabad, via Bangalore. When I had left Mumbai about a month back, I had left behind quite a lot of my clothes and documents and whatnot over there. The plan was to strap as much of it as possible behind the bike, and then ride along the boring highways until it was time to unload it all. Whatever was left behind would be left behind, if there’s anything that’s replaceable, replace it.
With this beautiful plan I ended up at Navi Mumbai inside the old apartment building. Some of the old roommates were still there, but I didn’t have any time to talk. I must’ve left some 50% of shit behind, there simply was no way I could carry it all. All the gifts and little tokens of appreciation were tossed thoughtlessly into the garbage, emotions are pointless.
After spending a good two hours sorting everything up, I brought the bags down to mount them up on the bike. After experimenting with a few different configurations, I decided to mount the saddlebags, then slide the laptop bag on the rear seat, and mount the tailbag on top of it. Easier said than done though, and watching me struggle like a baby with that mountain of luggage forced the elderly watchman to come over and help me out. Half an hour later, we were done, or that’s the best it could be.
Said my goodbyes, got on the bike, and realized in the first 5 seconds that the laptop bag was hitting my back, like a jack hammer. Well, a bit too late for change, so let’s keep going then shall we?
By the time I crossed Panvel, I knew there was no way I could ride more than a 100 kms like this. Stopped, messaged Amrit from Pune and asked him if I could spend the night at his place. He agreed, and I gunned the Dukey straight for his location, with a small snacks stop at Kamat’s to stock up on some energy.
But of course, there had to be traffic.
Traffic on the Pune-Satara road generally keeps moving. It might be slow, crawling even, but you rarely ever need to put your feet down. This day however, I found myself stuck in Bangalore-style traffic, standing at the same fucking spot after a good few minutes. Unlike cars, I could go off-road and try and cover some distance, but my bike was unstable with so much load, and then there was that back-stabbing bag in there, so I didn’t really want to bounce up and down some gravel path.
Saw a petrol pump by the side, so stopped to rest my clutch hand and the bloody back. After waiting for some half an hour, the traffic finally got a bit better, and onwards we went towards Amrit’s place.
Amrit Mishra is one of the most insane dudes that I know of. He works in some company as the IT guy, then comes back and works in some other company as the part-time IT guy, then goes and cycles from Pune to Goa, down some mountains, or up some roads, then runs marathons, and then works as a health trainer for some company, all the while being a rider who camps in the middle of nowhere and sleeps at dhabas. If you think I’m kidding, go find him on FB and see his timeline. Most of the stuff that he does isn’t there, but whatever there is is far more than I hope to achieve in an entire lifetime.
Went to the place that he shares with some other friends, unloaded the stuff, and off we went for some dinner. He didn’t speak much, and neither did I, but I liked the little conversations that we had, because they were far more meaningful than that forced excretion of words that goes by as “discussion” nowadays.
Back home he gave his bed to me to sleep on, while he slept in the hall on some mattress on the floor. I made 100% use of the opportunity, and promptly went to sleep.
🙂 Introverts find it hard to get appreciated but fact is as you said they don’t speak even when they have an opinion, are the most intelligent, nicest people you’ll ever meet and conversations are less but meaningful…..they know the power of silence… 😉
True!