first ride with dad - the pillion

I how excited I was on the evening Dad asked me to pick me up from his drop-down point at a bus-stop. On my way, i was thinking of all these small cute thoughts, how I grew up in his arms and how he used to take me on his cycle, ride me several miles, took me various places. I was so tiny then, barely reached up to his hips. He was my hero then, and still is...

Today I cant believe he would be sitting behind me as I take him home. All excited I was even as I spotted him in the crowd, he came walking towards me, he looked tired, tired to even notice the fact that his son is going to drive him home for the first time ever in his life!

I signaled him, sit behind, he insisted that he would drive, I sat firm and said, "No, I'm driving!". I could see the reluctance in allowing me to drive, he kept uttering words slowly out of which i figured out, cops and a few more..

Now as we started, it was one crazy ride ever, never a pillion rider troubled me so much. He was literally driving the bike sitting behind, he kept leaning on a side resulting the bike moving left and right on its own, "GO SLOW! BRAKE! DONT BRAKE THAT SUDDEN! WATCH OUT! LEFT! RIGHT! DONT SPEED!" he kept on saying all of this, occasionally linking them up with some of the failures in my life, until I yelled, "Dude, I know what I'm doing! I can take care of us both, you will reach home safe trust me."

I increase the volume on my music player so high stopped listening to his commentary, sped my way, ripped past trucks, cars, zoomed into all small gaps, took full advantage of empty roads hitting speeds which i never experienced sitting behind.

And we reached home!

He dint talk to me for like 15minutes, and said "You need to drive slow my son!" :P,

I promised myself within, never am I gonna make you my pillion again. I happened to break this promise a week later!

Ensigns - At Nellore

(This is a true incident our band witnessed)

Even as a group of passionate youngsters, when we started off as a band we looked forward to grabbing every single opportunity to play at any place we got the chance to,(happens with every new band). And playing at Nellore for a bunch of people who absolutely don't relate to the kind of music was a compromise or rather a sacrifice we made and what we had no clue of.

Anyways that is not the point, it so happened that there was a small mis-communication with the organizers of the event at Nellore regarding the name of the band. We landed at Nellore, seen posters all around, we dint care to have a close look at them.

On the day of the event, we sat down in the front row waiting to hear the line, "ladies and gentlemen we present to you the ENSIGNS!"

We dint have to wait long to hear, "today we have a special band from Hyderabad, *silence*, we have Heavenly Melodies!" :| We wondering whoa! is there another band from Hyderabad, when the guy at the announcements signaled, "Dude! Its all yours, take over",

I still remember the look on the faces of us band members that day. We happened to play good and people must've thought these guys deserve a better name than "Heavenly Melodies".