The cycling days

 Childhood has a tendency to have a breezy swipe over all miseries and disadvantages born of limited circumstances. In our childhood, there was no variety in cycle models. Those were big, bulky, rotund Atlas and Hero cycles made for tough elders to carry loads over the dirt tracks. So how would little children with little legs learn cycling? That was the question. The kids of today carry a big advantage in having tiny cycles with supporters that train them into the art even before they realize that they have been learning cycling. When we were growing up it was the same cycle for a centurion and a little kid. It was the same cycle that carried fodder bales and newly wed brides. The very same cycle to go on love errands and carry out devious designs.

We would whisk away big, rusted, age-old cycles at great risk of severe punishment. It was an item of luxury at the village level. Almost possessed the same status as a medium range SUV does these days. So you can evaluate its importance. The saddle would reach almost to our head level. So we learnt cycling in kenchi (scissor) style. A master art of convenience, equipped with all the unconventional over-ridings. The little rider would get into the triangular frame under the bar and take his leg across for the other pedal, hold the handle with one hand and cling to the saddle with the other for support. Others would push and prod from all angles possible to maintain the balance; almost a sight like ants clinging to a big grain. The bicycle would then tumble and bury a few children with the rider trapped in.

It would then, with the passage of time and enhancement of skills, graduate to the bar style—swinging the hips down on both sides while paddling to meet the length and the bum staying in air over the bar because sitting on the saddle would find the riding toes several inches above the pedals. It would give a serpentine trajectory because each push down on either side would see the handle being tilted in that direction. It was a very jerky and effort-taking style especially when you had a pillion rider behind you. That would require a big effort to maintain the balance.

I remember an episode when I had graduated to the bar style as a thin thirteen or fourteen years old. Perched on the carrier at the back my chubbily cute friend sang bawdy Haryanvi raginis as I took the lurching behemoth on the pot-holed district road passing by the village. Those were the days when you were lucky enough to have a clear road for many minutes at a stretch. The traffic was sparse and we went almost unchecked on our voracious exploration of the countryside.

It was a fine day and the road all clear for me to heave Grandfather’s big old bicycle. A few hundred meters ahead I saw a peasant woman going by the side of the road. And I panicked that I may hit her. There wasn’t anything coming from either side; the entire road to my service. I lost control over the direction. The bicycle seemed to go of its own volition. It was a logjam of contradictory thoughts across my boyish nerves. The big bicycle went relentlessly at full throttle, as if magnetically attracted to her. It went directly darting into her and with a bang it bashed into her broad peasant woman’s behind. All three of us rolled pell-mell. Boyhood gives you enough agility to jump to your feet quickly. Before she could recover from the shock and give a rippling outburst, we were running away into the shrubberies.

She was a huge farming woman with an ox-like torso. And she kept thundering threats and abusive words brandishing her sickle at us. She sat on the fallen bicycle for a good half hour waiting for us to arrive and twist our ears and give a few hard hits at our back. But we were wiser for that; with all the time at our disposal. We simply sat at a safe distance patiently listening to her lamenting vocals and incessant burst of hot temper. She but had lots of work to do in the fields, so left after raising a big storm of threats and foul words.

As village boys we were short on resources but long on ingenuity to draw fun games out of rudimentary things. There was another fun game that we frequently engaged in. We would take turns to roll into a circle to fit inside the hollow of a big discarded tyre and roll the cargo down a slope. A group of stronger boys waited down the slope to operate as the brakes for the rudimentary machine.