1. It is a routine for last one and a half year. Every Friday evening I head home, 155 km away to be with my dear ones. Every Monday morning I return back to the place of work following the same road. Contrary to what one may expect, it is not the journey on Friday evenings that I relish but the journey back that gets me going.
2. 0515 hrs is the wheels roll time on Monday mornings, hit the day break ten-fifteen minutes into the journey. First 50 kms are on a drab NH, except for some half awake truckers and chartered buses loaded with sleepy head bobbing tourist coming down from what once was a great destination in Himachal, no other traffic is encountered.
3. Turn left from the NH, I hit the country road and this is what I get to see,
4. It is time to roll all the windows down, smell the cool misty early morning air. Set the driver’s seat to its lowermost and steering wheel hits its bottom stop. Set the cruise control to 75 km/h, and switch on ‘Playlist 1’. Look right, this is what I gets to see.
5. No thoughts of the office yet, it is still 100kms away.
Empty road beckons.
6. Lata, Asha, Kishore, Rafi and occasionally Jagjit take over and the mind is gets into simplest harmonic motion. There is only joy to be seen around, life looks and feels wonderful. An occasional trucker breaks the rhythm.
7. A perfect journey where nobody awaits you at the destination, a journey where it is you, your car and the road ahead. You play with the machine, and it springs new surprises at you and the journey continues!
8. Sufferings of stuffy urban India vanish on this road, wherever you look it this what you get to see.
No better beginning to Monday mornings.