Bird-hit

It's an unusually hot April in Calcutta and I have even more than usual reason to complain. My motorcycle, the Pulsar in all its electric blue glory is demanding an unfair share of my attention every weekend. It's parked inside my low roofed garage typical to houses in Central Calcutta and the constricted dimensions of the garage make it the inside of a pressure cooker on summer days like today. I like spending time with my bike but only when I am riding it. As of now I spend a lot of time cleaning it. And it is all thanks to some as yet unseen birds (very likely to be crows) which have developed a taste for bombarding my ride with well aimed discharges of a disgusting nature.

Normally aeroplanes are the only form of motorized transports which need to be wary of birds as one of their feathered co-flyers could easily bring a plane down if the plane was at flying speed. But of late, my Pulsar seems to be the target of airdrops from the feathered air forces that patrol Calcutta's skies. Even though 99% of the time my bike stays inside my garage or inside my office parking lot, in the remaining 1% of the time when say I am inside an ATM, or inside a roadside shop, some avian miscreant in a perfectly timed fly-past manages to make a mess on my mobike's seat or right on the front wheel guard where the 'white' on blue really stands out. I never really saw the event with my own eyes (Luckily yet for me because that might lead to more laundry for me apart from the chore of cleaning up my bike) but whenever I come back to the vehicle, sure enough on one occasion every week, the crime is already committed and the perpetrator has literally flown the coop. Consequently, every weekend I find myself sweating, huffing and puffing in the confines of my garage wiping away the traces of another undeserved, discriminatory attack. Now if only my motorcycle could carry an umbrella!