BHPian Pure_ Rhythm recently shared this with other enthusiasts: I don’t think the burden of losing my buddy would ever get easy, but I’ll at least try to get used to it. A few days ago, I just had a random thought that one of my friends cum riding buddy, Riddhesh, hadn’t been in contact with me for almost a little over 1.5 months. Albeit I didn’t think anything negative of it as of then, I still had some recurring thoughts. Maybe he got into an accident and was trying to recover, maybe he was just taking his time off instagram (or social media) to have a mental detox, maybe he was just focusing on his exams. Expected it to be anything but what it actually turned out to be. To dive a bit deeper, I just randomly went through one of his instagram posts’ comment section and to get any clues that I could find. And I did. One of the comments there said something along the lines of “It’s only been one day and I already miss you”. My heart sank. I couldn’t digest the thoughts that started to flood my mind. I quickly tried searching for news with his exact name on Google. For the first few searches, it was nothing. But then, I put the exact credentials and there was this news pretty relevant to his actual info. Initially, I wasn’t ready to believe this news and take it as is. I kept making excuses that maybe it was someone else who was being talked about here, but in the end, all the dots started to connect. And then it failed upon me… that it, in fact, was my friend that this news was about and who the news belonged to. The accident took place on the 27th of July, just two days after my last talk with him. I won’t talk much about how I’m feeling about all this and how I’m dealing with the news, cause at the end of the day, one’s feelings can hardly ever be understood by others to the most extent.Will just say that it hasn’t been easy or quick to fathom. The news has surely settled in, but it isn’t Settled in.Now, for the lessons that I’ve learnt from this incident:1) Never take your safety for granted, no matter what vehicle you’re in.My friend used to wear all kinds of protective gear while riding. A nice Royal Enfield Helmet to complement his RE Bear 650, a proper riding jacket, proper riding shoes, proper riding Gloves and Knee protectors. Now, I don’t know if he was wearing all his gear while riding that evening, but from the time I’ve seen him riding (since 2024 when we first met), I’ve almost always seen him with his gear on (at least the helmet, gloves and jacket). For someone who took his safety not for granted, if he could go through an accident and not survive, I could just imagine what I would go through if I were to be in such an accident myself.2) Never push yourself and your vehicle beyond their limits.If your body doesn’t agree to it, DON’T DO IT. If your bike doesn’t allow itself to do it, DON’T DO IT. Risking your entire life for a slight bit of fun will get you nowhere. I’m not saying to never have fun and to never enjoy your time with your ride… just that in the flow of doing that, do not neglect your safety.3) Do not skip the regular maintenance and care of your vehicle.Be it the tyres, the brakes, the lights, indicators, horn, seat, levers or anything. If it causes you any sort of inconvenience, do not skip it or neglect it, at least not for too long. You’d never know when that one slight inconvenience would cause a major stuck-up in your life.4) Focus on developing skills, not speed.There’ll be many instances, especially while living in India, that’ll test your riding/driving skills and will be a do-or-die situation. Those are the situations where you’ll need those same skills to be a helping hand for your safety. You may buy a faster, bigger bike that’ll help you reach those speeds that you always wanted… but the skills that you should develop will come in handy no matter what vehicle you acquire. Faster, mediocre or slower… they’ll always be in need. Finally, I would like to end this small, expressive blog on this note. Thank you for going through this entire blog and reading it till the end. Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.
