Night-outs and Friends

Its been long. Since I pulled an all-nighter. Decided to do it today. Tonight. No particular reason. Just. Its been so long that I can't remember the last time I stayed up all night. I used to do it a lot. Back in high school. Especially in 11th & 12th. We used to have sleepovers at one of the guy's house (that's what we told our parents. None of parents ever even came close to finding out what we actually did. Bless them all). The thing is no one ever sleeps at a sleepover. We took it a step further. Several steps further. Pretend to sleep till about 11 (waiting for whosever parents to go to sleep). Once snoring commences from the master bedroom, sneak out to the balcony of our room, climb onto the railing, reach for the branch of the neighbour's mango tree and we're out! Bikes wheeled to a safe distance from the house and then started. Freedom for the next 6 hours to do what we want. Empty roads to greet us. Begging us to accelerate. We oblige. Where to go? The beach (a favourite at any time of the day. Or night), The Gudde ( a hill with a cliff on one side. Brilliant breeze. Frequented by druggies and smokers during the day. And by crazy teens like us in the night. Last time I went to my hometown, I found the whole hill bulldozed to the ground and a poster of an apartment building put up in it's place), Holy Hill (a hilltop chapel with a 20 ft statue of Jesus at the peak), a highway dhaba, or just rip on the highways; we had loads of options. I feel like an old man reminiscing about his heyday. But back then, the city was a quiet place at night. Everyone, including the police, where they should be - in bed. Used to be a sleepy place with zero nightlife. Gave us ample opportunity to explore the city by night. Security was so lax we even got into the airport a couple of nights. Raced our bikes on the runway. Almost 4 kms of topspeed on the smoothest stretch of tar I've been on. It was exhilirating. Being on the beach was fun. Just walking along the shore. Trying to avoid the waves in order to protect our shoes. Reading and laughing at the weird boat names. Having mock fights with oars in the light of a cellphone. Finding road-repair equipment abandoned for the night was always a thrill. The number of times we tried getting a roadroller to start up in vain. We'd end up wearing the workers' hard hats and posing for photos astride the machine. The number of miles we've put in just cruising the highways at night, I don't know. I've lost count. Actually, I've never kept count. But, we used to go even into the neighbouring districts. A couple of times, even crossed the state border. Easily done 150 odd kms a few times. I remember once, we were tired out and were about 10 kms or so away from the guy's place where we were supposed to be sleeping, so we parked the bikes and put them on centrestand and slept on them! The best part of these long distance rides were the songs we sang. Out of tune. Off key. But with more joy than a devout Christian on Christmas eve. We said we'd always do it whenever a chance comes our way. Promised ourselves and each other. But like I said, it's been a while now. Opportunity seems to have gone about knocking elsewhere. Or maybe we've just grown apart. Each searching for something new beyond the horizon in different directions. Being in different places for higher studies doesn't help. And guys aren't very good at talking on the phone for hours with other guys. Whatever the reason, a night-out on bikes with those guys doesn't seem to be on the cards anytime soon. Damn! I'm getting all nostalgic and misty-eyed. Those were the days my friend, We thought would never end.