Many years ago, before I became a proud owner of Yamaha 100, I used to have a Yamaha 50. It was red in color and many a times the person riding on it also used to get shades of red. These red shades sometimes came in anger and sometimes as blushes. This motorcycle made sure that its rider always remained humble.
During my high school years, poetry of Allama Iqbal became part of our compulsory Urdu course. Almost in every Urdu class our teacher used to make us think about Allama Iqbal’s philosophy of ‘khudi’ (ego). I tried my level best to understand it but whenever I sat on my Yamaha 50, my belief in ‘khudi’ always went lower than before. This motorcycle was more a like a case of ‘be-khudi’ (no self control).
Maximum rated speed of this motorcycle was 60 kmph. This must have been the theoretical limit set by its Japanese creators, (Mr. Yamaha??) because on the road it never went above 15 kmph.
So Once Upon a Time….
I was riding my Yamaha 50 on a narrow street. To give room to an oncoming vehicle I swerved to the side and went past closely to some wild bushes. What I didn’t know at that time was those wild bushes were home to a mad dog which was not very fond of visitors; especially those who came on motorcycles. On seeing my motorcycle near his front door, this mad dog suddenly came out of the bushes. He started showing me all his canines and then made bubbles out of his saliva. pphhrrr pphhhrrr.
At this point I was hoping the dog should start barking so that from his barking tone I could judge his mood. I also knew that ‘barking dogs seldom bite’ but Patras Bukhari‘s famous lines also came to mind that
You never know when a seldom biting dog may stop barking and start biting ….
so I guess I was rightly suspicious of his motives.
The dog’s silent phrrrrr phrrrr bubble making exercise was extracting living daylights out of me. I turned the accelerator to the full while not taking my eyes off the dog.
Nearby, the dog also started stamping his back feet on the ground as if getting ready to take off. My motorcycle gained full speed which to my horror came out to be exactly 15 kmph. For a second, it seemed to me that the dog smiled at me and then I remember vividly that he ran after me.
I’ve heard that mad dogs go for the human legs first therefore I immediately lifted my legs. I made them horizontal in the air, so they were at the same height as my motorcycle’s fuel tank. On the other hand the dog gained speed and reached up to just 3 feet behind my motorcycle.
Since I don’t have photos from this incident, I tried to sketch it out for you. I have no talents in drawing but I hope my sketches may convey the situation well.
The mad dog came witihn 3 feet of where my legs start
phir kia hoa? …(What Happened Next?)
hona kia tha..He must’ve been an old dog because somehow his maximum speed also came out to be 15 kmph. My motorcycle and this dog were now in a state of dynamic equilibrium. We were both running but the distance between us remained constant.
The traffic on both sides of the street screeched to a halt as everyone started watching this interesting tussle between dog and machine. The human (i.e. me) was out of this equation as my fate was totally dependent on the machine-animal variables. After chasing me for 15 or 20 feet, the dog finally gave up and I was able to breath again. The traffic that had halted to see this interesting duel also started to move again. All of this happened in just few seconds but for the life of me, I cannot forget the details up to milliseconds level and hence I am able to stretch those few seconds to so many lines of text here.
I was a teenager when I started riding this motorcycle. I was full of energy, dreams and ready to take on the whole world. You cannot imagine how handicapped I used to feel while riding this bike. There was no mode of conveyance available to mankind, to which I didn’t lose in speed.
For example, filled with youthful agression, I would sometimes decide to overtake a passenger bus. I would increase the accelerator and in 30 seconds or so I would emerge from the back of the bus and reach its side. At this stage my motorcycle would reach its maximum speed. Both bus and I would be running in parallel now. Some passengers, who would be looking at me with interest, would openly start smiling by now. This would further deplete my trust in Allama Iqbal’s philosophy of ‘khudi’ and increase in that of supurdagi (submission).
Trying to overtake a bus was always a humbling experience.
This motorcycle remained in my custody until 1990 when I bought a Yamaha 100 and was able to conquer the whole world with it. Yamaha 50 was sold for just under a thousand rupees. If it is still alive and running then by now it must’ve grown old to Yamaha 20 or Yamaha 10. I wish all the best to its current owner, whoever he might be.
Adil, you made me laugh in the first paragraph of your message :) I agree, we should look at it from the dogs perspective too. To them we may appear as much mad as we try to label them such.
Owais, interesting as always.
I did own a motorcycle (A Honda 70… of the ‘kabhi nahin rukti’ fame), but was never as adventurous as you.
On the pagal kutta thing, however, with all due apologies can I take a slightly different take. Maybe we should look at it from the kutta‘s perspective too. I wonder if they really are pagal... or whether it is paalto dogs who are the mad ones. [From the dog’s perspective a two-legged guy prancing on a two-wheeled beast that makes horrendous noises and belches smoke, woudl not look too sane either ;-) ]
More seriously, maybe being seen to be mad and be thrown stones at and to bear the ridicule of society is the price that they pay for maintaining their independence and not bowing to the whims of silly ‘masters’ throwing them bones and balls to fetch.
I guess I am just in a philosophical mood today ;-) This reminded me of a poem (I think it is by Mustafa Zaidi but I may be wrong) called Pagal Khanna… the last stanza went something like this:
Apni tolli tou hai kuch sokhta samaanoun ki
Aksareeat mein hum aatay tou samajhti duniya
Iss katheray kay udhar bheeR hai deevanoun ki
Gist: maybe its all of us on this side of the ‘pagal’ divide, caught in our so-called ‘real world’ who are actually the mad ones ;-)
funny story…I never owened a motorcycle in Pakistan but am aware of the “Pagal Kutta” (Mad Dog) issue very well. I had my own share of experiences with these pagal kuttas…some of them only barked and some ran after you. As a reflex action, whenever I’d spot a Loose Dog I would very quickly start looking for stones. This was an excellent repellent ! So, if the dog starts running after you or barks at you, you simply throw 4-5 stones at it and it should run away. Now sometimes I made pre-emptive strikes as well, due to my love for Dogs. These pre-emptive strikes made sure that the distance myself and the enemy would be a decent one.
As for breeding Alsations and German Sheperd Dogs, most people do it for security. Some also do it for showing their dogs off. My dad once bought an Alsation Dog for me. He made this purchase while driving. He was waiting for a red light to turn green and then there was this peddler selling this real Alsation dog for only 100 Rs (in 1985). He immediately bought it and brought it home. I was delighted to see the animal and couldnt wait to torture it. We named it “Tiger”. The next day as we were giving Tiger a bath, we discovered that his “Alsation Ears” were glued in a way that they would point up. And that “Tiger” was no more than an ordinary mutt. I still loved Tiger and wanted to keep him until the following evening when he somehow jumped our six feet wall or sneaked out of the back door and left us for good !!!
Bilal
my life is full of being chased by mad dogs :) In grade I my English teacher Ms Laila asked us to write an essay on ‘My School’. Being seriously challenged in English then, I came up with this silly sentence: “My school has 13 gates”. Ms Laila had doubts on this sentence on technical grounds. She thought our school had 11 gated entrances. So to resolve this issue she sent myself and another class fellow Rehan to go out of the class and count the gates. Our school was huge. It had a cricket ground, a hockey ground, a soccer ground and lots of barren land. We crossed all these land barriers and had counted 7 gates when we came across a shrub where we found a few new born puppies. We were completely peaceful but their over possessive mother dog came barking and running after us. She gave us a long chase across the width of the soccer field before giving up on us. It was sheer good luck that she didn’t get hold of our legs. We came to our class out of breath. Ms Laila asked: “so how many gated entrances our school has?” To this my friend Rehan replied: “Miss hamaary peechay kuttay paR gayay the. Hum ne sirf 7 ginay haiN ” (Miss, we were chased by the dogs. We only counted seven). The whole class burst into laughter but since that day I’ve never known whether our school has 13 gated entrances or 11. Hopefully one day in future I’ll go back and re-count.
Hey Owais, funny incident.
I have had my run-ins with dogs as well. And knowing that a friend’s pet Alsatian (why do Pakistanis like that dog anyways, and not the cuter variety that fit inside handbags?) attacked his sister and sent her to the emergency room with several stitches, made me literally run for my life at one time.
That said, I took your numbers and did a calculation. If the dog was traveling at 15 km/h and followed you for only 20 feet, that says he followed you for less than 1.5 seconds. How much a single “lamhaa” can change our lives!