Saturday, April 02, 2005

Hounded!

It was Friday night, or rather more like Saturday morning. I was returning home on my bike with my buddy Chinku from a second show quite oblivious of the dangers lurking in the darkness. The roads were clear and I was in the mood for taking my bike for a good rip. Well, albeit my friend warning me, I took to a 'shorter' route back home. As i moved along, I noticed something disquieting. There was a pack of warring dogs on the road. Bangalore is a famous for its dog menace as it is for the software engineers. So,sighting the dogs was not the stunning thing. It was the sheer number of them that stunned. There were scores of them, unruly and I guess there was some kind of a turf war going on amongst them!
Dogs here, are using to chasing vehicles especially two wheelers, in the night and there have been several cases of people getting bitten. Well, it was too late now. The dogs had seen me! And all of a sudden the barks subsided and I saw around a hundred canine eyes watching my bike. I halted the bike feeling my friends hand on my shoulder. If I tried to speed back down the road we were sure to be chased and caught down. And well, going ahead was not exactly an alternative too. Well, I am an avid dog lover and all I wanted to do was to get out of the situation without getting harmed and not harm the dogs too. So, I decided to take a risk and go ahead. As soon as I moved ahead, many of the dogs tersed up, and moved towards me baring their teeth and growling! I really freaked out, but held my calm and brought the drone of the bike to a minimum and cruised ahead at crawling pace! I told my friend to make sure he does'nt look at the dogs in their eyes or make any rapid movements which would incite the dogs. Well, I was moving through a pack of growling dogs and was not looking at them at all. I guess my heart beat at twice the normal rate and my ploy worked! The dogs left us alone! I still held my slow pace till we reached the end of the road and then pulled the throttle to zip away from that 'shortcut' road!! Well, I guess my knowledge about dogs helped me from getting really hurt!