Grandpa's Cycle

 

Grandfather rode his archaic Atlas cycle till his late eighties. Apparently innocuous and toothless, he had a sharp mind and still sharper willpower to hit a century of years like his favorite Sachin did on the cricket field. His classic old cycle and his frail but athletic figure presented an epic profile when you observed them slowly moving on the dusted path of life. Both seemed steeped in antiquity but you would never fail to feel the delectable charm of a pair honed by vintage years. The cycle would give panting, creaking and groaning sounds in response to his slow, easeful paddling. Maybe his joints also creaked but any sound in that genre was shadowed by his metallic companion.

I remember my first lesson in cycling at the age of twelve. With me sitting on the crossbar in front, a fodder bale at the back, Grandfather heaved the cycle at the age of eighty or a bit more. To learn cycling first you should know how to properly occupy the passenger spot anywhere possible on the cycle. That was Grandfather’s advice as I tried my best to behave to the best of my capacity, juddering like an infantile passenger, trying my level best to score good marks in the art of sitting on a cycle. For a long time I was having his warning muffles above my head, ‘Don’t hold the handle too tight. Don’t try to steer it this way or that!’ Then we fell down. He plonked a hand-smash at my nape, ‘Didn’t I tell you not to try to steer the handle. That’s the rider’s job!’ he exposed my grand profanity.

Three years later, we were coming in the similar manner with the slight adjustment that my still older grandpa was sitting in front as I plodded ahead with much sideways shaking of the front tyre. Grandfather forgot his own lessons in the art of being a passenger on a cycle. Not a fault of his, the frustrating cascades of my lurching paddling were sufficient to make him forget his own set of rules. No wonder, Grandfather hardly trusted my ability to see us safely home. So I found him involuntarily trying to control the handle.

It turned into a motley mix of forces in opposite directions. ‘Grandpa you said it’s the rider’s job. Now why do you apply pressure to steer the handle?’ I breathlessly protested over his headgear. ‘Yea, but that’s only when the rider knows to do his job properly,’ he angrily countered. He followed his observation with an expert maneuver to avoid the cake-cutting ceremony of a fresh lump of dung on the way. I pulled in a different direction. The tyre cut through the dung heap as a celebratory cake-cutting of the event to follow. We were a heap of cycle, humans and the fodder bale. ‘Why did you pull it while it was my job?’ I complained, scared of the colossal discharge of his seasoned farmer’s reflexes. ‘Because you were not able to!’ he shouted and feigned to smash the back of my head with his teacherly palm but stopped short, possibly realizing his role in the little accident.

After that we simply walked to our home. As a punishment, I had to pull the fodder-laden cycle, a tough job for a slightly built boy. I was sweating profusely. ‘It gives a nice practice to manage the handle,’ Grandfather tenderly consoled. He was slightly limping after the fall. So I was lucky not to get his favorite palm-smash at the nape. He was but luckier—in not getting a fracture after crash-landing from a cycle in his mid-eighties. So that was a close save.