The most outrageous day.

And probably the worst day of my friend's life...

We were 3 friends, lets call the other two Misaal and Tungar, who were returning home in a Maruti 800 car, after celebrating some occasion at about 8 in the night.

We all had had a few drinks... namely, I had 60 ml of vodka and Tungar had double the amount of vodka and some beer running through his veins, and it showed too. He was sitting in the back seat and singing loudly and swearing at whoever overtook us. Misaal had water and lemonade for his share of the drinks, and probably a taste of the vodka.

I was driving the car as I felt very confident about driving... in fact, more the alcohol content in my blood, the more I felt confident about driving. We are driving down a 2 way road, which has a modest divider between traffic headed in opposite directions, in the form of a solid yellow line.

We had almost driven 6 km from the pub, going through modestly heavy traffic. All this while, Tungar continued singing and swearing in the backseat. Misaal tried to reason with him, "Tungar... bas kar bhai, gaana sunne de". We also tried turning up the stereo volume, to drown Tungar's voice, but at such high volume, the speakers sounded worse than Tungar.

My semi inebriated mind came up with a brilliant plan to cut our miseries in half. I figured that one way to make him stop swearing is to make sure that no one overtook us. That will half our problems... he will only be singing. Additionally, if I drive fast, the time that I need to spend with him singing in the back will be cut short.

With these 2 thoughts in mind, I accelerated. Due to low oncoming traffic, I often darted into the wrong side in order to overtake.

Tungar completely dodged my plans... now he started swearing at any cars which we overtook. I confronted him... "what are you doing? You only swore at cars which overtook us!". "These slow bastards are holding up traffic" he replied. He also swore at cars going the other way, "I cant believe they are so slow... look at us overtake those snails".

Even at this speed and swerving in and out of traffic, I noticed that there was another Maruti 800 which kept up with our pace... and then it overtook us. I noticed it had dark tinted windows - lets call it BM (black maruti). Tungar swore at it. It got caught up in some traffic ahead and I got an opportunity to overtake it. Tungar swore at it again. I think they never heard what Tungar said as the windows were closed.

Soon, BM overtook us again, and Tungar swore again. He also noticed that his swearing was not having much effect. The car simply zoomed ahead without any apparent damage. The next time we overtook BM, Tungar decided to take matters further and showed BM the finger. This did hurt and the damage was going to become apparent soon. I didnt know that this had happened and was happily driving away.

BM overtook us and braked in front of our car, right in the middle of the road, forcing me to brake and stop behind him. The car doors opened and out poured 6 guys of decent height and build and muslim looking clothes - 2 of them were wearing long black kurtas and one had a small beard without a mustache.

The driver started walking towards me with an expression on his face which hinted that he was going to smash my window. Surprisingly, he kept on walking and went and opened the back door, which was unlocked. Two other guys helped him to drag Tungar out of the back seat. It took me a few seconds to realize what is happening.

I immediately stepped out and tried to understand if we were in any danger. My suspicions were immediately confirmed. 2 guyz were holding Tungar, one by the jaw and the other was holding his hands, with the others standing around and looking on. I tried to intervene by coming between Tungar and his fans, and trying to make some argument of the sort "Just a minute guys. What is the problem?"

They replied "Let us first beat him to a pulp, then we will explain", shoving me out of the way and getting hold of Tungar once again. I realized that I was not the one they wanted. I hinted to Misaal to get in the car and start it and be ready to make off.

By the time I intervened again and tried to reason our way out, one of the guys slapped Tungar, breaking his spectacles. Tungar struck back with his own slaps, punches and scratches. More from the BM gang started moving in... I was just able to move between them to break up the fight for a few precious seconds in which I could open the back door of the car and Tungar dived in.

Misaal made off with Tungar.

Now there was another problem to solve. I was left behind with the BM guys. Now that I realized what I had done, I realized the effect of alcohol on my overconfidence... obviously I must have had too much to drink. They caught me and asked me to call Tungar and tell him to surrender. Until then, I would be held ransom. I said that I hardly knew those two. I met them at the bar and was just giving them a ride home and now, thanks to you, my car is gone. Of course they didnt buy it. They discussed the various alternatives with me... like beating me up, kidnapping me, etc. I proposed an alternative that they should let me go and put up wanted posters for Tungar. I was outvoted on the idea.

Finally they decided that kidnapping me was a sure way of getting at Tungar, and tried to fit 7 in their BM. I am eternally thankful to Maruti for making cars of such small size which makes it difficult to fit in 7 people. They might have still managed to kidnap me if not for the baggage in the so called boot.

They finally gave up and threatened me to threaten Tungar with dire consequences. Once they departed, I walked a km while checking to see if anybody was following me before calling up Misaal and Tungar, who came to pick me up. I duly threatened Tungar with dire consequences, if he didnt stop singing and swearing.

About their part of the story, as soon as they were out of danger, they realized that I was missing and Tungar wanted to return back to get beaten up. Misaal talked sense into him - "One person getting beaten up is better than 2 injured and 1 dead". They looked on from a safe distance at the proceedings, and tried to call the police. Of course, things got sorted out before any further damage, which could have been bad if the police had been involved.

Tungar was obviously in a foul mood when we reached home. He replaced his broken spectacles with a spare pair that he had kept for such unforeseen circumstances. Tungar wanted to smoke to calm down his nerves, but was out of cigarettes. So I accompanied him to the cigarette shop on a motorcycle. On our way back, as is the usual custom, few dogs started barking and chasing after the motorcycle, trying to bite our calves and feet. All the foul mood and the anger of earlier proceedings came back and we got extremely pissed off with the dogs. Tungar suddenly braked and stopped the bike.

The dogs got confused by the sudden stopping of the bike. They didnt expect it and had never experienced anything like it. They didnt know what to do with a stationary bike. They had been taught only to chase after moving vehicles.

The dogs were about to turn back dejectedly when Tungar put the bike on stand and went after a dog who had been pestering him for some time. He found a largish dornick (dornick = a stone suitable for throwing) and was about to take aim. The dog noticed this and ran and hid under a small truck parked nearby. Tungar looked under the truck, found the dog's hiding place and took aim. He, in cricketing terms, danced down the track and hurled the stone towards the dog with all his might. Of course, his aim was off the mark.

The stone clanged loudly against some metal part of the truck, hearing which, the owner of the truck who was sleeping on the terrace of the adjacent house got up and scrutinized the situation. Tungar was getting ready to throw another stone. The owner immediately ran down, out of his house and with a load roar, punched Tungar in the guts.

The punch forced all the air out of Tungar's lungs, leaving him winded, unable to breath and doubled up in pain for the next 2 minutes. The owner tried to slap Tungar, but only caught his replacement specks, which flew off and broke against the gravel on the road. I could only play my part as a defender once again and broke up this assault.

We returned home in the worst mood possible and decided in an unsaid pact that it wont be discussed. The loss of both specks on the same day can be highly traumatic.