Oh the Impediment!

It was a cold moonless night. The sky was a sooty indigo canvas with only a few fragments of it visible through the canopy of trees, like strewed pieces of an impossible jigsaw puzzle. The chilly air carried a fragrance of leaves and marshy earth as it gingerly turned foggy. 

"Turn right in next 100 meters." announced the GPS. 

The car moved steadily at 60 kmph, all one could see out of the windows was the patch of highway briefly lit by the headlights and hear was the radio that played the latest tunes.

"Watch out!" shrieked Zain when he saw a flood of headlights racing toward them from the opposite direction.

The car came to a screeching halt before they could turn right. 

Everything froze, Zain could no longer hear the song playing out of radio or chew the gum that sat on his frozen tongue. The highway that offered nothing but trees along it, for a company had suddenly bestowed them with a biker gang for companionship. Cold sweat trickled down his neck when he saw a mob of seven fellas riding on five bikes out of his window. Their faces were partially obscured by the dearth of light and the only flicker in addition to headlights was the one from their cigarette tips which gleamed like orange fireflies born to perish.

While Zain sat flustered in the back-seat of the car and fought the urge to hide below his seat, he could suddenly hear people clapping.

"Happy birthday to you!" sang everyone around him, roughly an hour ago. He was standing on one side of the table with the birthday cake and the kids of the orphanage and his friends on the other. The surge of emotions melted his heart like snow in the early summer sun. It was his 25th birthday and the 20th orphanage he visited in his life. This year he chose to visit a little one 30 km from the city. He still remembers the first orphanage he visited as a five-year-old with his father, its been 20 years since then and he has never broken the tradition of spending his day with the kids in an orphanage and arranging three meals of the day and enjoyable activities for all of them.  With each passing year, his birthday made him more humble and grateful for everyone and everything in his life.

"Knock, Knock" came the sound which made Zain lose his train of thought. One of the men wearing an orange shirt got off the bike and tapped on the car window beckoning the cab-driver.

"Noooo!" screamed Zain as the driver opened the door and got down and the man peeped through the opened door and sneered at Zain.

"Why did he have to step out of the car? He thinks he can hulk smash everyone out there!" he gasped and quickly slipped out the mobile from the pocket only to be benumbed on the sight of  'no signal' message. The fear was so intense that he was no longer capable of thinking straight.  He roughly calculated all the money he had in his pockets and was ready to hand over to those raggedy men.

"I should have left with Raj and Karthik at 5:00 p.m. in the evening instead of taking this cab!"

"It's alright! I'll just give them everything I have and ask them to spare me, They are just petty thieves and nothing else" he assured himself and right when he mustered the courage to step out of the car and take care of the situation his eyes widened, breaths frayed and cracked when he saw the driver return with the man in orange shirt riding shotgun.

"Oh my god! They are not thieves! They are kidnappers!" all alarms went off in Zain's head. He was so stupefied that he could think of no logical reason for anyone to kidnap him. 

"What is going on here? Who is this person and why did he get into the cab? What is your plan?" demanded Zain as he scanned the man in the front seat for possession of any weapons.

"Plan? Chill bro there's no plan. I am Kamal, I live in this neighborhood. The right lane is blocked for some unknown reason we just came back from there and that's why we stopped you to save your time!" said the man as he shrugged his shoulders.

" Of course you are friendly neighborhood Spiderman!" murmured Zain.

"Haan Sirji. He just got in to show us an alternative route as the GPS is stuck and it's a tad difficult to follow directions in darkness" chirred in the driver as Zain mopped his forehead and neck and smiled meekly.