Analogikal

Ah yes. The cycle (called cycle or bike from hereon). A two wheeled invention that provides dopamine, salvation, sense of purpose and, most importantly, a means of transportation. I have loved the cycle from a very young age. Mostly from afar since I never owned one nor had access to one. I was also petrified of the physics behind them. Explain to me how it makes any sense! You pedal using your feet and steer using your hands and balance your body on 4 square inches where as the bike barely meets the earth on a combined 4 square inches. This shouldn’t work. This can’t work. Yet, it does. 

The earliest image of bicycle riders were the fishermen of my town. They would howl like an amateur wolf learning to hit the higher notes. They would scream the names of the catches of the day in a voice can only be summarised as the vocal depiction of a doctor’s handwriting; legible only to them and to the ones whom they are telegraphing it. Some of them could ride the bike using only one hand with a ‘beedi’ on their lips and their lungi flowing in the wind. At other times, they could ride with no hands while straightening their headband. All this with a few kilos of fish sitting frigid in the ice box maintained steady at the back of the cycle. My inability to ride a cycle only compounded my fascination for their craft. 

We are in the 7th grade. Everyone in my class could ride a cycle, except for me. Somehow this made me less of a boy. I had always been a late bloomer except for my physical structure. I couldn’t grow a beard, learn to swim, smoke a cigarette, hit on a girl or ride a bike when everyone else around me were able to perform these feats. I am grateful for the same. You need someone to tell you, then teach you and then inevitably pick you up when you fall. I didn’t have that someone when I was growing up. Somehow, I am grateful for that as well.

One day I took my cousin’s bike for fixing. He was occupied and someone had to do sacrifice their afternoon. I was always fascinated by the mundane. I rolled it all the way till the cycle store. That was the first time I had come in contact with a cycle in the wild. I felt its gears move, I heard the sound of the free-wheel when we were rolling side by side. I felt the heaviness of the metal under my arms. Most importantly, I felt the sense of freedom that comes with being on two wheels. I saw the cycle taken apart and put back together. Where the grease went and how everything shone after a run in with soap, water and cloth. I rolled it back home all the way. Shiny, smooth and well-oiled. I’d like to believe it spoke to me. Told me I am ready to take the plunge. I propped up the seat to the right height and sat on it. The cycle and I became one. A singular unit. We rolled. The breeze in our faces and the past on the road we left behind with every passing second. Everything that led to that moment, seemed insignificant. So did everything that lay ahead.

I come home bruised and battered. It has been a few months since that fateful first ride. Riding has become second nature. I, now, understood how the fishermen worked their magic. With complacency and confidence comes appetite for error. I negotiated a patch of gravel at a pace and an angle that would teach me a valuable lesson in traction. We skid. The first free-fall of my life from a moving object. I will cherish that moment forever. In that moment lies my passage to the other side of fear. I do not blame the bike for my crash. I do not blame myself. I do not blame the road. In fact, I don’t think that moment requires the assigning of blame. It was a moment to be taken as it is. Bruised skin, blood, torn shorts and everything. No judgments. Just the moment as it is. This would lay down the marker for the rest of my relationship with a bike. No judgements. Just being. 

When I left my hometown for the first time, I bequeathed the cycle to a child who asked for it. Like children who plant a mango seed in the hope of inheriting mangos, I too sowed the seeds in the hope of reaping some karma. She came in the form of a silver coloured rusting mountain bike 7 years later. Stuck in a garage for two years, she needed salvation. Stuck in a rut at work and in life, so did I. We found each other. I took her as she was and rode her to her rebirth. I felt every squeak, every rattle, every bend and every missing part. The folks at the store did her justice. We have been together for 7 years. By volume, magnitude and impact on life decisions, this has been the greatest relationship of my life. 

We still share our Sunday morning rides without fail. We reflect on the life that has passed us by in the time between rides. I reflect through her acceleration, climb and the shifts in my breath and heartbeat. If football saved my life, cycling helped me fall in love with it again. To the open road and the companions we find on it.

Till next time.