It happened to me

There'll always be old faithful, whichever way you look at it. Book, movie, place, car, friend and your old shorts. It's your comfort zone. But, sometimes you just have to give them up.

I'd had a good swim and we were deliberating an idli-sambar breakfast. It was the end of the month and liquidity was nil. Even a packet of peanuts was a 'Do-I-really-need-it' situation. We got stuck at a traffic signal. A bus stopped alongside and I reached into the pockets of old faithful (not-so-deep, cottony, familiar) to see how much money I had. A coin fell out.

It was only a buck, but in this hour of financial crisis, it could mean the difference between breakfast and tummy-grumbling hungry. Should I have left it there for a beggar? Let it go since I'm an earning member of my family? But wait, that's the point. The sweat and blood that went into that Re 1 was my story. Ok, so I sub stories for a living. Yet, it's still my money and I wasn't going to leave it at a traffic light.

I hopped off the bike. There were only a couple of seconds before the light changed and I didn't want to be the reason a trail of children arrived late to school. Quick as lightning I scooped up the coin and hopped back on. There came a heart-rending scream, stomach-churning sound, a heart-stopping moment. Old faithful had given way. She couldn't take my selfish jumping about anymore.

So she left me sitting on the bike with a rip through her vital organs (the largest rip you've ever seen), the peeking of bright blue and shame-faced embarrassment from the beggars' curse. I couldn't get idli-sambar for breakfast that day. Horror!