New Delhi, Oct 01: Another crazy night. Servo, Munk and I are at Servo's den once again discussing life and its varied intricacies. Empty bottles lie around his junkyard of a room - an exhibition of all the hard work we've collectively put in.
Servo decides to break the bad news. "We are out of cigs and there's no food," he enlightens us. It's time to hit the streets once again. Anybody worth his booze would swear by the AIIMS parathas. Not us, though. Not when the parathas happen to be all that you've been stuffing down your throat for a week now. Servo suggests beef.
Beef it is. Too bad they are thinking of banning it. We hear the familiar splutter of Randy's ancient Hero Honda Splendour. That's four of us now. But first we need to get nicotine.
We drive down to "IIT gate" where nightcrawlers usually end up in search of cigarettes and parathas. We sit in Servo's car waiting for chottu to deliver us from our miseries. A herd of cows laze around the roadside. One of them decides to cross across to the divider, strolling along chewing cud, the usual bovine way. From the other end of the road, a Ford Ikon comes charging, speakers blasting the latest remix. It smashes into the cow, reverses and drives away with a few scratches on the bumper.
Before you can yell "Oh s***", a Santro follows up and rams into the creature lying smack in the middle of the road, as if completing the job that the car before it had initiated. A couple of bystanders walk towards the dead beast, stare at it, nod their heads and walk back.



"I think we will forget the beef, we could just eat the parathas, you know. I've heard the ones you get at Yusuf Sarai are excellent," Servo breaks the silence.



Yusuf Sarai it is. It's a short drive and no one talks. The parathas here are no better than any other. A hungry cow nearby gets the leftovers. Our journey continues, this time towards AIIMS. The rest of us receive a severe jolt as Servo swerves his car to avoid something on the road.



"What the hell..." Munk screams. Servo screeches the car to a halt. There's a man lying in a pool of blood sprawled across the right lane of an extremely busy Ring Road. His scooter, pile of junk, lies next to him. We park the car ahead and wait for the traffic to slow down to cross across to the other side.



That doesn't happen and we decide to make a sprint. We succeed and reach the man who is still breathing, although unconscious.



Randy fishes out his cellphone and calls the cops. The voice on the other end tells him that they already know. In the meantime, a truck comes hurtling towards us and narrowly misses the dying man by an inch.



"Dude, we need to do something," Munk wakes out of his drunkenness. I walk up in front and start waving to the vehicles to warn them of a man lying on the road while the rest scratch their heads and watch the body and debate on whether they should move the poor guy to a safer place.



It takes 12 minutes for the cops to arrive after which, for some strange reason, take a U-turn and reach the other side of the road. One of them crosses the road, looks at the body and shouts something across to his counterparts. They mutter something into their walkie-talkie. Three more minutes and they get a stretcher into which they pile the man and get going. They have to take a U-turn again to reach AIIMS which is the closest hospital.



By now we have sobered down quite a bit and are wondering what we could do now.



"I think my brother has some left over from last night's party," Servo suggests.



We head towards his place.