The thing about revenge...

If you have swindled through the Bangalore traffic, you swindled through it all! It is third to nothing, when it comes to the most congested traffic in the world (first, of course being Bombay - forget New York or England).

Well, it was just another day in Bangalore. I was happily on my way to office. Its like a million miles, in another galaxy far far away. And it takes a couple of light years to get there. Still, gotta get there. So there I was, on my bike, riding through the morning cacophony.

All is going well, the weather is pleasant, and I was almost feeling happy of the situation, when out of nowhere, this impicile in a car swerves right in front of me! He came through my right and almost made a ninety degree turn to get ahead of me.

I almost lost my balance, but fortunately didn't go off road. Managed to keep riding.

Now I dont know whether the guy was doped or something, but he continued on as if nothing happened, doing the same things to others that he did to me. As if he was going to lose his last flight to Dumboland which he won in some internet lottery.

There was clearly no emergency. No pregnant lady ready to pop. No old man on dialysis. No minister dying to reach a cabinet meeting. But there he was, determined to defeat everyone on the road, even transport buses.

Now normally, I would have yelled "What the heck, you moron!! Are your eyes on your butt?" and moved along, but today I was not in the best of all moods. I did try yelling that, plus some local words ideal for this situation. It didn't feel enough. For some reason, I got really fired up. Gotta teach this guy a lesson.

Mine is no race bike, its just a 100cc Yamaha. But the good thing about bikes on Bangalore roads is that you can always get ahead if you want to. Traffic is so disorganized that there will always be small gaps left on the sides, between everything from a bicycle to truck. One of the reasons for getting a bike, too. I raced over to overtake the guy. It took like 2-3 minutes, but finally his engine was facing my butt.

Now let's make him see how the speedometer would look in the acute angle. I braked, and slowed down to around 30 kmph. Now the bad thing about cars in Bangalore is that they've got nowhere to run. You can't turn left, there's a bus, with a driver who has his eyes fixed on the cute passenger girl standing next to him. On the right is a guy in a car with one hand on the steering and one on the mobile, on which he seemed to be conducting a conference call with BinLaden and Bush. None of these guys would hear the plea's of my poor victim, who seemed to be trapped in a parallel universe where time stands still. Honk honk! No use. That will teach the crazy moron a lesson.

I stayed between 20-30 kmph for a few moments more. I thought I'll let go once I've reached a certain satisfaction equal to the mood I had before all this fiasco started. When I started racing for the guy a couple of minutes ago, revenge against him was the only motive, the driving force. But somehow, now that I have him, it doesn't feel as good as promised. Also, staying at low speed let the other guys in the traffic get ahead of me, and as the result I lagged behind. I dragged the bad guy down with me too, but I was in it too. After sometime, I let go, and speeded off on my way. I could clearly see the moron behind me, shouting something in the local language, which I didn't understand anyway. I rode away with a smug little grin on my face.

Later, down at the office, I was taking a break from work, and the thought came to mind about what happened. Not about the actual events, no need to feel sorry for that. But at the implications of it. It was as if this incident had happened to teach me a lesson in life.

Whenever someone hurts you, all you can think of is somehow getting back at them. You want to make them feel the pain that you felt, so that they know too, the way it feels. In short, you seek revenge. Once you have that feeling, you get so involved in it that you forget the rest of what matters. As was the case with me, the rest of the world overtakes, while we are too busy pulling the enemy back. What I did not notice was that I was pulling myself back with him too.

Revenge never brings any good. It just makes the other person suffer some minor inconvenience, and make him hate you more. The best you can do to get back at someone who have hurt you is to move forward in life. Move so ahead of them that they can't reach you. Make them regret they did what they did by doing good to them. Regret is a bigger punishment than Revenge. And forgiveness is better than both of it.

I'm not going to race any f-rated morons who overtake me.