The Suicide Slider Squad
( A Cottonian sees them – unbelievably true)
… or abbreviated in deadly manner “S.S.S”
where steel hits glass, bumpers mangle , shards fly with burning rubber; often air bags fail to inflate and heads roll, eye balls bounce and teeth shoot off faster than an Uzi machine gun….leaving blood on asphalt and deafening screams like those heard in the dungeons of no return … their echoes ricocheting from pillar to post until the horns of heavy tracks squash them under their bellies as they charge onwards …
Jitendra “Jeet” Singh Balmiki rises from his spunked coir mattress bed at 2100 hrs in the village of Mahipalpur … he stretches his arms and stifles a yawn, scratches his groin and splutters out a phlegm of rust mud and soot.. his eyes are blood shot and his greasy hair sticks to his face that has a weeks growth of pepper and salt whiskers …
He doesn’t recollect last when he bathed, water is salty and he drinks a concoction of tea laced with country booze, honey, ginger and betel nut… and yes salt water .. hot slimy and heavy …
He drags on a pair of grease pants and slips on a dirty shirt, the left pocket is ripped and flaps like a morose dog, tired just as Jeet is…
In fifteen minutes he hears the sputter of a demented motor bike as it nears his little dirty den; living on the upper floor of a three story house, the ground and first are dominated by pimps who trade the flesh of girls they picked up and shackled as the latter lost their ways drifting in to the Big City looking for work as maids, sweepers and even construction workers carrying cement and bricks on their backs for meagre daily wages.. …they never made it that far as they were snatched in to the rotten life and there was no escape…
Jeet and his room mate were offered discounts ! but he was pretty clean in that sense as his roving eyes laid rest on one whose name he never knew … she too lived below .. a dark dusky maiden with thick lustrous hair and deep black eyes… her body was hour glass and she knew her price … never once looking at Jeet as he rambled down… he always looked at her … for him these were the best few seconds of the day… like the taste of rice pudding with shy wisps of saffron and green cardamom.. she was his parfum, his bonus …determined he was ..one day he would buy her out and take her home and marry her…he smiled at her, she from the corner of her eye at-him-with-utter-disgust as he resembled a tramp, a vagabond and a waster she thought.. never realising he was part of the SSS… and he honked worse than a foul smelling skunk…
Jeet worked the Graveyard shift from 2130 to 0630, from today evening to tomorrow morning when hell’s fury was at its best , rampant with those that concealed themselves in the dark, trying their best to avoid the SSS as the latter waited in the dark to ambush those who dared to…. not many succeeded, and for those who tried and never made it … their days were terminated right there …!
As Jeet stepped outside, Jeevan Singh Rathor jumped off the bike its motor running and with a brief nod he rolled the machine to Jeet and bounded up the steps… his shift was over … but no cleansing , no prayers he just dived on to the warm heavy smelling shared bed and was snoring in a jiffy…he was gone into his world of dreams just as Jeet drove away to NH8.
He arrived at his post at 2126,four minutes before taking the bull by one horn as the second chap too arrived holding the other end… the graveyard shift was when the marauding wheelers like Mad Max challenged the strength integrity and guts of the SSS; a sport they played with very heavy bloody stakes…
The air was heavy with heat, his body wet, his lithe body with sinewy muscle, deep gashes and gnarled scars as if a wolf or vampire had set its fangs in his chest, his arms and thighs…all these marks…but amongst the kith and kin of the SSS, these were trophies of headlong encounters much talked about on dusky evenings as they sat all huddled sharing the Hookah, the younger set fascinated with wide eyes, open mouths and baited breath.. as the progression from youth to SSS was passed on just as pilotage of the Hudson River was passed from Grandfather to Son to Grandson…
There was a calm that prevailed for twenty minutes, and then….
six pairs of headlights were picked up by the watch keeper, an experienced elder who had moved from SSS to SS ( “sharp sight”).. he shouted across to the gate keepers….
Six SSS positioned their barricade bulls in tandem bracing for the onslaught… “Sharp Sight” screamed “increased acceleration .. looks like 120 Km and only increasing … these Mothers are not reducing ..”
The headlights grew stronger and the sounds of whining to shrieking engines belching poisonous jet black pollution shattered the peace coming hurtling down …
Powerful lights from the posts shot on to both blind and warn the hurtling machines, their drivers to slow down and stop … but to stop was the work of cowards…
to stop them was the work of the SSS…
300 metres and approaching at speeds of 130 Km…. and a few seconds ticked down to 50 metres … this was when Jeet and his mate, the other bulls too heaved and pushed as three sliders shot out blocking the path of the on coming marauders ….there was no smell of burning rubber …. only the blaring of horns… who would relent ? But no..no one.. prestige, reputation, steel fame and steel rain..the drivers given a bonus “ you do not stop you do not pay toll” otherwise they would be shafted .. a mild word.
… three massive trucks with eight axles each charged into
the steel barricade bulls ramming them like Rocket Locomotives…
Jeet ducked and flattened himself parallel to the trucks, his partner a millisecond too slow …
the other sliders managed to jump away but the damage was done …
Ferocious steel impacted and the drivers lost control… the engines disintegrated against the sliders but inertia carried them fused together with 2000C heat diagonally across the highway for 200 metres…the oil tanks burst, tyres and asphalt melted and with a huge explosion one disintegrated and the others axles broke away and rolled down the road leaving a trail of molten fire whilst the last rolled tumbled breaking the side barrier, finally ramming a tree spinning on its twenty metre length and landing on its back…the searing heat of flames like spewing roaring flamethrowers and hissing dragons spread for kilometres…
None of the three drivers made it… no remains were found.. it was assumed they vaporised just as the ISIS when drones melt and form vapours
with total annihilation..
The mayhem was over, complete in under two minutes…
…and a deathly calm prevailed…
Jeet stood up and searched for whatever was left of his mate …perished too he was dragged along with the mangled wreckage of steel ….and totalled.
Jeet walked slowly back to his post where another mate was preparing a bull slider … they nodded to each other positioning themselves…lighting a beedi each they wiped away the destruction from their hearts, soul and mind, hunkering down for the remainder of their shift…
… as Jeet smoked the end of the beedi… his thoughts flashed back to his sultry maiden …
“Soon “ he whispered …”
Very soon”….*
Bonnie Bhasin
11th April 2019 -0750hrs National Highway 8
Enroute to IGI terminal 3 New Delhi .. to catch AY122 Delhi-Helsinki
*true stories dedicated to those toll-post-miserable-men who risk their lives on Indian highways …every minute, every second preventing truckers, public transport vehicles to cross state borders… ensuring they pay entry tax …
or perish in mangled heaps
with mangled steel.
… their pay is pathetically minimal…
S.S.S… or should I say…
Save Sinner’s Souls🙏
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