motorcycle plane ride

The car roared through the streets. Then it slowly stopped. Not a full stop. It was just slower, the engine quieter. He was listening to his sound. The music. He glanced in the rear view. Enough space. He looked in front of him. A motorcycle. The wife, looking pissed, wearing a head covering. Sitting perched on one side of it. How they managed to do that, he didn’t know. So much balance was required. The man in front of them looked bored. His hair was sparse above his forehead and grew denser and thicker as it reached the back of his skull. Past him, the driver could make out a tuft of thick hair. He gave the motorcycle a wide berth. They didn’t have rear view mirrors. And motorcycles were unpredictable. The drivers would drive recklessly. Not out of some desire to show how cool they were. It was something else. Something he had not figured out. Maybe they were just tired of life, and wanted the die of life to give them a little thrill. He gave them a wide berth as he passed them because of the boy. They might not care about their lives. But he didn’t want the boy to suffer or get in an accident or die because of him. As he passed them, he saw the boy’s face. Concentration and focus were playing a dance on it. He was staring straight ahead. His spikes were pushed back by the wind. His face was clean. His shalwaar kameez looked worn down but it was clean. On his back and in between him and his father, there was a school bag. The boy looked out at the world from between the handlebars of the motorcycle. He felt that the boy saw something other than what he himself saw. Something other than the buses going dangerously fast, and switching lanes dangerously frequently. Something other than the motorcycles with stacked families like his, some the same. Most had more passengers. Something other than the old roads that were barely cleaned, and when they were, they weren’t with the diligence of people who took pride in being working men, but with the carelessness of those who thought cleaning anything, even if it was doing a public service was below them, and those that therefore tried to cut corners. The boy’s eyes were focused. And clouded. It felt as if he were seeing something else. What a powerful tool imagination could be. For a few seconds, and the following belief didn’t leave him, but he had the impression that the boy felt he was piloting an aircraft. And that thought brought a melancholy smile to his heart. His situation was sad. The boy’s situation seemed sad. He lived in a country where on paper they might, but in effect, the poor had little to no rights. His life wasn’t great. Maybe he was being presumptuous. But it probably wasn’t. And yet, here he was, enjoying something as simple, and probably uncomfortable in the searing, humid August heat, as a motorcycle ride.