Bengaluru biker Santosh remembers to fight another day

Biker CS Santosh woke up ready for Stage 5 of the world's toughest adventure race - the Dakar Rally - in 2021, only he was back home in Bengaluru.

This routine would repeat itself for over a month, and each time he was surprised to find himself on an unfamiliar bed, at a house he couldn't call home and among people he didn't recognise.

On January 6 last year, Santosh crashed on Stage 4 and dropped unconscious before being found by passing riders. His limp frame was flown to Riyadh where it was confirmed that he had brain trauma and a dislocated shoulder. After being placed in a medically-induced coma for nearly 10 days, Santosh was flown back to India.

Little over a year has passed since, and Santosh has begun preparing to brave the most demanding rally of them all, once again. The 2024 edition of the Dakar will see Santosh return to the site of his greatest challenge(s).

And to think that only a few months ago, he was still battling the delusions of Dakar.

After the crash, Santosh's memory of his immediate family only returned in patches, but most else remained elusive, including an intimate relationship he had shared with his girlfriend of over a year.

Owing to atrophying cognition, Santosh had to relearn the basics and even learn tactility from scratch. Despite the progress, his brain continued to battle versions of reality, and this existential dilemma rendered him incapable of accepting the love of someone he had loved for long.

"I remember a woman coming to see me when I was recovering," he carefully strings the sentence. "She was my girlfriend at the time of the crash, but I don’t remember the relationship with her. I only had a vague feeling of familiarity, not one of intimacy."

Having seen pictures and accompanying stories of this relationship, Santosh let his guard down enough to allow her to accompany him during the eight months of rehabilitation in Europe. But he would have to end the relationship soon after.

"...I told her ‘I love you like my sister, I love you like my mother. I don’t love you like my girlfriend. I don’t feel like that about you'. I had to tell her that. I had to be honest with her," he says.

Though his cognition has improved, at least he doesn't have a memory lapse every few minutes, he still only has fragments of what happened the last four years. In fact, he barely recalls the crash that put him in this predicament.

"For the first month, I remember telling my mother, my father and everyone that it was a dream," he says. "I thought I was sleeping at the bivouac (a tent) at Dakar, the next day is the race, and I am dreaming about all these things."

"Hell, I couldn't even believe that I was in India," he adds.

The fact that Santosh was able to recognise his family and retrace some of his steps itself was a blessing because medical professionals had warned him that he could lose all of his memory.

Oddly enough, he remembers most of what happened before 2015, including the incident where he was nearly burnt alive by a fuel spill from his bike in 2013. He admits his ability to recall is still a bit patchy, but months of rehabilitation has helped him sustain short-term memories for longer.

And yet, his dream to get back on the bike earlier this year took a hit when Red Bull put him through cognition tests and decided he wasn't ready to get back on the bike, let alone at the Dakar.

He went to the race nevertheless, this time as a spectator, and watched his ex-girlfriend drive the rally.

Mind still vacillating between regret and gratitude, Santosh abruptly recalls months of depression and untethered identity. "I would cry for hours, but I wasn't sad. I felt all these intense emotions coming out of me, and I was almost always overwhelmed. I would be sitting at a coffee shop, with a friend, and I would randomly breakdown," he says.

Though Santosh turned down therapy (the bike is my therapy, he says), he was eventually put on medication. "Before, I had to be this strong guy, and not let emotions affect me, not show my weaknesses, but now I embrace every emotion," he offers.

There is a sliver of optimism in his voice when he responds to 'would you like your memory to return?', but almost as if to not raise own expectations, he follows it up with: "I have resigned to my fate."

Perhaps it is this acceptance that has brought him to the cusp of another stint at the Dakar. He admits that he would not be as fast as he was and won't forcefully chase his dream of finishing in the top-20. "I have to say goodbye to that guy. He is no more, but this new me is looking forward to a journey," he says.

Coincidentally, the Dakar Rally is referred to as the greatest journey of them all.