You know Shubhendu. Or maybe you think you know him. He’s the wizard behind the screen, the guy who speaks fluent code, the cybersecurity sentinel guarding digital fortresses. His world? A humming symphony of servers, firewalls, and encrypted data streams. He lived inside the tech, breathed it, loved it. So much so, that the world outside his glowing monitors started to feel… pixelated. Faded. Like a low-res image of what life could be.
setup
One day, the silence between keystrokes got too loud. Shubhendu looked up, really looked, and saw ghosts of a different kind – his colleagues, laughing, sharing pictures of kids, planning weekend family trips. They were plugged into a network he’d somehow firewalled himself out of. Maa? Yeah, she was great, but explaining the existential dread of a digital native or the thrill of cracking a complex encryption wasn’t exactly dinner[-time conversation. Loneliness, cold and sharp, bit harder than any malware he’d ever encountered.
uhh Life needed a hard reset. A break. A detour. hahah Let’s go!!
March 30th, 2025: Escape Velocity
The date felt significant. A line drawn in the digital sand. He threw a leg over his beast – the Royal Enfield Himalayan 450, gritty and ready. Destination: Talakaveri Talkakadu , the birthplace of the Kaveri river, via the winding roads towards BR Hills. Bengaluru’s concrete jungle shrunk in his mirrors as the engine roared to life.
Freedom tasted like wind and gasoline. Helmet on, DJ Suketu(90’s Kids Knows him for sad song remixes) blasting through the built-in speakers, Shubhendu wasn’t just riding; he was flying. The speedo needle danced around 110 km/h, a physical velocity matching the digital speed he was used to, but this… this was real. The road blurred, worries dissolved into the thumping bassline and the asphalt ribbon unfurling before him.
Jungle Beats and Buffalo Dreams
Then, the urban sprawl gave way to emerald green. He hit the elephant corridor near BR Hills – a core jungle zone where tarmac felt like an intruder. The air grew cooler, thicker, smelling of earth and wild things. And suddenly, amidst this raw nature, life pulsated in a different rhythm.
mud pillow
Villagers, vibrant in traditional attire, were celebrating Ugadi. Laughter echoed, drums beat a primal rhythm. And there, under the cool breeze, leaning against a tree, was Vincet. A young guy, maybe early twenties, calmly watching over a herd of about twenty buffalo peacefully grazing. There was an ease about him, a quiet contentment that seemed alien to Shubhendu’s fast-paced world. Turns out, Vincet was newly married, his wife a teacher in the local school. Living life, simple and full.
Shubhendu, his Kannada fractured and hesitant, approached this island of calm. What unfolded wasn’t just conversation; it was a strange, three-hour communion. Language barriers crumbled under the weight of shared humanity. Vincet spoke of the jungle’s secrets, the rhythm of rains and buffalo, a life measured in seasons, not seconds. An old man on a sputtering Luna, weathered face a roadmap of stories, joined their improbable circle. No pretense, no profiles, just presence. Shubhendu, the tech oracle, felt stripped bare, humbled by the sheer, unvarnished reality of it. This was the connection he craved – raw, unfiltered, offline. Photos snapped, numbers exchanged – fragile digital threads spun across a vast analog divide. A promise made: he’d return, camp under the stars, breathe this wild air again.
Lovely folk “Vincet”
No status posturing, no digital masks. Just raw, human conversation. Shubhendu, the tech guru, felt utterly humbled. Life wasn’t just code and deadlines; it was grazing buffalo, Ugadi drums, and a stranger’s uncomplicated smile. They clicked photos, exchanged numbers – a bridge built across a chasm of difference. Shubhendu promised Vincet he’d be back, maybe for that night camping trip deep in the woods they’d talked about.
Highway Hypnosis, Headlight Horror
Leaving felt like tearing himself away. Dusk deepened into an inky, starless night as he hit the state highway. Single lane. A black ribbon slicing through nowhere. Loneliness returned, amplified by the vast darkness. Headlights appeared in the distance – approaching fast. Too fast.
Instinctively, he flicked the dipper switch. That small, crucial courtesy of the road. Dim your lights, mate. Nothing. The blue indicator on his dash remained stubbornly dark.He tried again. Flick, flick. Dead. A cold dread snaked up his spine. At 95, 100, 110 km/h, that tiny light was his voice in the dark, his only way to signal the oncoming glare.
The headlights opposite weren’t just lights anymore. They were twin suns, burning holes in the night, consuming the road between them. They weren’t dipping. They weren’t slowing. They were aiming right for him.
Panic seized his throat. He hammered the switch. Useless. Betrayed by his own machine. Time compressed. The world narrowed to that blinding, incandescent wall of light and metal hurtling towards him. A primal scream built in his chest.
Service center : fixing Dipper switch
Dial Tone Silence
Safe, finally, within the familiar walls of his apartment, the adrenaline ebbed, leaving behind a desperate need to share. To process the wild swing from profound connection to near-fatal disaster. Who do you call when your world tilts sideways?
First try: “Chatterbox,” his childhood friend. The one who always had time, always listened. Straight to voicemail. He typed out a quick “Hey, crazy ride today, survived a near miss! Call me when free?” Sent. No blue ticks. No reply.
Next: His sister. “Hey, free for a quick call?” Her reply blinked back on his screen almost instantly: “Tell me over text?”
Text? How do you text the visceral fear of headlights rushing towards you? How do you text the quiet wisdom of a buffalo herder? How do you text the feeling of your own mortality snapping into sharp focus? Some things need a voice, a breath, a shared silence.
Then, Megha, his Kannada-speaking friend, the one who might understand the context. Busy. Family celebrations. Of course. Everyone was plugged into their lives, their networks.
He was adrift again. Point blank. Surrounded by connections, yet utterly alone with his story.
The Call, The Crash
Morning came. The anxiety hadn’t faded; it had morphed, sharpened by the silence from Chatterbox. He called again. Voicemail. Called a third time. Voicemail. Anger started to bubble beneath the worry. Why wasn’t she picking up? Or at least calling back? Didn’t she see the message?
He tried a different number, maybe hers was acting up. It rang. And she picked up. Relief washed over him, quickly followed by confusion.
“Hey! Everything okay? I called a few times, texted…” “Oh, hey! Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, didn’t see your message.” A pause. “My phone was connected to the car’s Bluetooth, playing music. I saw your calls pop up on the dashboard, but…”
But.
The word hung there. She saw the calls. On the dashboard. And chose… music? Over a friend reaching out after sending a message about a “crazy ride” and a “near miss”?
The connection with Vincet – pure, unfiltered, selfless – flashed in his mind. Three hours with a stranger who knew nothing about him, overcoming language barriers, sharing slices of life. Then this – a childhood friend, seeing his calls for help flash by on a screen, letting them go unanswered.
System Failure : Personal Touch
The contrast was a brutal truth, hitting harder than any cyberattack. Was this friendship? This fragile, conditional connection, easily overridden by a playlist? Did anyone really know him beyond the Shubhendu_CyberSec expert persona? Did he even know them?
The polished surfaces of tech, the seamless connectivity – had it all become a glittering facade, masking a deeper, more terrifying disconnect? A world where seeing a friend’s urgent call flash on a dashboard warrants less response than a notification ping?
It wasn’t just hurt; it was a system error in his understanding of the world. A mental trauma, as the prompt put it, leaving confusion, self-doubt, a gnawing sense of unreality. Everyone knew his reputation, his skills. But the man behind the keyboard, the one who nearly became a smear on a dark highway, the one who found solace talking to a buffalo herder – did that Shubhendu even register?
Maybe Vincet, the stranger, was the real signal in the noise. Maybe genuine connection thrives in the uncharted territories, far from the walled gardens of our established networks. Be open to the stranger, the unexpected node. Don’t get hardwired to expectations.
The ride hadn’t just been about escaping the digital; it had plunged him into the messy, terrifying, unpredictable source code of human connection itself. The debugging had just begun. And Shubhendu suspected this search for a clean signal, for something real in the static, was going to be the most critical mission of his life. The road ahead was dark, the dipper switch still broken, and he was riding into the unknown.
