I like riding through cities after midnight. There is a certain beauty to urban places when the roads are all but empty and the world rests in the shadows. The quiet wash of endless neon lights fighting the all encroaching darkness. The sensual swoosh of an occasional car passing by. The melancholic moodiness of roads stretching to the horizon. The wind surfing through my hair. The sudden rush of adrenalin racing through my veins in tune with the acceleration of the metal beast underneath.

Billboards, shining like beacons, scream overhead their neat middle-class dreams. The soft underbelly of the city is alive and kicking. The radium jackets of the night sweepers flashing here and there. A police car on the horizon on a routine patrol. And the utter stillness. It is this stillness of the night that makes me roam the roads. The stillness of a night at peace with itself. The stillness of sudden inactivity, a lull awaiting new chaos on the morn. The time between 12 am and 5 am trickles away like a light shower on a summer evening.

I slip in and out of unfamiliar streets, hit the big roads and then disappear into forgotten side-streets. I overtake the occasional vehicle on the road with supreme ease. As I pass a vehicle the guy in/on it nods at me. A polite acknowledgement of another person seeking the same moonshine. I look up. Ah, there he is! The guardian of the night in all his pockmarked handsomeness. His delicate light hiding more than it reveals.

But I saved the best for the last. The addas, the places only special locals know. The joints where lonely poets go to roost and welcome dawn with a hot cup of sweet chai.