A V-Twin Diary

Queue, an Upbeat Lo-Fi beat. Darkness dissolves as a bright onset of a magical backdrop in motion comes alive. There you are. Riding on a Harley Panhead ’56. Wearing those little cap-like open helmets and the wind very gently takes your magical locks of simmering brunette hair in its hand to examine them in detail, to cherish the beauty in motion. You are wearing a denim blue jean jacket and a torn jeans. Hugging you man's leather cut with your delicately carved fingernails which have a smidge of grease under them from when he asked you to help him in the garage before heading on to this beautiful road. Its somewhat of a slim and tidy freshly baked cake with concrete coloured chocolate smeared to perfection. A Riding Heaven. Its like you have been on his road before.

But now in the rainy season, the smoothness of the road is just mesmerizing. It sways into the tall redwood and pine trees like a free-flowing river creating its path through the plains, Like a snake fluidically slithering into tall grass. The wind is cold. Not pinching you, but like ac on 23 degrees. Refreshing and comfortable. You can sense the easy-going nature of the environment you are passing through. The same being resonated by him and you, as you both breath on this borrowed elixir of air that the trees there have been benevolent enough to share with you. Music of birdsong being support by the ongoing rumble of this old Harley Twin makes it the perfect Rock ballad to be listening to after a few rounds of some very American Bourbon, Smokey and Sweet. Like it’s been made by honey bees while they smoked a few Cubans.

He reaches back to hold your hand and brings it in front, to him and hugs it on his heart. Much like wearing it as a medal bestowed on him for some bravery on the battlefield. He puts a little kiss on your fingers while your hand is still in his clasp. Almost like he put a ring on your finger with that kiss. But knowing him, he will probably put a M5 Hex nut on your finger and marry you while being serenaded by a bunch of Harley Motors and something between Billy Joel and The Righteous Brothers. And you the best part is that won’t hate that. Because you know how he sways to Taylor Swift when in private with you in your casa, How he just melts watching those kitten videos but acts like Rambo on Warpath while out with you. Can you him though? He is just trying to impress you.

But these rides are seldom about the love you share with him but about the sense and love you both have for freedom. Freedom from being enslaved in the concrete jungle by a RFID tag on your ID card. A freedom that smells like gasoline and fresh damp soil ; and often like that refreshing cucumber-like-smell that the rain inspires from the land after kissing it for some time. Its about the space you get while sitting two inches behind him. A freedom of thought and action that is unchallenged by anyone in your world. An escape to forget yourself entirely, so that you can remember who you really are a little. To be less inward bound.

You see mountains in the distance. Redwoods and Canada has always been a very picturesque place for people to exploit their wanderlust. It’s the peace that finds you here. Similar to what you feel after kissing him passionately for a while. A very settling, calming and relaxed breath that leaves your bosom and fills you with warmth and assurance of a good life ahead, or at-least the strength too endure a little less graceful one. You are giving up to freedom. You are accepting the motions and understanding that the true meaning of being an outlaw is not in breaking laws, but in imagining something that has been caged off from your grasp by laws and rules made by this fickle world. And being an outlaw, your only religion is Dynamism.

It's the lack of dynamism and the appetite to digest the uncharted possibilities that has made everyone a bitch to the world’s designer. It’s the liberation that you get in knowing that you aren’t the supreme being or the authority on this earth, but only in your life’s decisions. Being an outlaw is a claim that you refuse to sign off your peace to someone else. And claim it moving forward with bold claim and stride.

Nishant Gupta

Image: https://in.pinterest.com/pin/712835447255065172/