“Ye marega!” (He’ll die!)
A man riding a motorcycle alongside mine on a Road exclaimed, even as he and a few fellow motorists on two-wheelers and three-wheelers (auto rickshaws) tried to block my way and keep me from following a black Hyundai SUV driven by a woman, the rear end of which I had bumped with the front wheel of my motorcycle a few times a minute or so earlier.
I had been very angry because she had bumped my motorcycle from behind, twice, a few seconds before that. Both instances had been unprovoked. After the first instance, I maintained the bike’s balance and rode on, albeit a bit slowly. However, she seemed hellbent on driving me off the road or, at least, off the bike, so she hit me a second time. This time I braked hard and stopped her in her tracks. She tried to accelerate and push me harder but my bike’s silencer just dug into her car’s front bumper and she couldn’t move the car. It was only after my bike’s silencer had made an indelible mark on the car’s bumper that she braked.
I Moved a bit and she passed by me. It was then that I moved behind her vehicle and bumped it a few times to give her a taste of her own medicine. After that, others made way for her car and then moved swiftly to keep me from following her.
Incidentally, this was the second such incident in three days, both taking place while I was on my way to work. The last time my bike got imbalanced and its entire weight (all 187 kg of it) came on to my left foot, as I tried to prevent it from hitting the road and getting damaged. I suffered a small sprain as a result. Also, the bike’s left rear-view mirror broke somehow and a jagged edge caught me in the left arm, leaving behind a nasty little scratch.
In any case, I let the car driver go without an argument or even asking him to pay for the broken mirror or the cost for getting the scratch on my arm dressed (because it was bleeding).
Since I came to live and work in this city, there have been three such attempts to throw me off the bike, including the two I have mentioned above, besides numerous instances of vehicles being driven in a threatening manner, in order to intimidate me for whatever reasons ‘they‘ have for doing so.
It should be useful to mention here that the very first death threats ‘they’ gave me, about four-and-a-half years ago, were to bump me off in a road accident, since it is probably the most convenient way of getting rid of some one, without the law classifying it as murder. I had mentioned that in the police complaints I had filed then.
The latest attempts may have something to do with the RTI (right to information) application I have filed recently to find out about the action taken, if any, by the police, following the second of my two email-based complaints against criminal intimidation.
