It’s too hot for a helmet, but, zooming through Allahabad’s lawless traffic, my bicycle racing sixteen-wheeler trucks, I’m navigating Google Maps with one hand, readjusting my N95 dustmask with the other. I used to despise those idiotic men in oversized vehicles who luxuriate in roadrage. Turns out I just needed my own set of wheels to outcompete them at their game of murder-suicide. I worry about inhaling dust but not about becoming roadkill. Am I so farsighted that I can’t see what’s under my nose? Well, asthma ruins my day, whereas bike crashes have only grazed my elbows so far.
Fall Contest 2024 “Flirt” Finalist! Amita Basu is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose fiction appears in over seventy venues including The Penn Review, Bamboo Ridge, Jelly Bucket, Phoebe, and Funicular. Of “Die Another Day,” Contest Readers said: “like how some lines syntactically imitate the movement of the imagery” and “good writing, evocative language.”