As far back as I can remember, I always loved cycling.
As a wee little lad with the mind of a goldfish, my life was forever altered when I was handed a tricycle so strong it could have crushed a Nokia 3310 under its titanium-like wheels. Made locally in an age when the fact didn’t earn you any nationalism brownie points, it was a force to be reckoned with. Well, at least in my mind. It was love at first spin, and a bond forged in annoying anyone taller than four feet.
As I grew older, so did my need and desire for more grown-up bikes. The trike was let go of, but not before I had gutted its seat out as a memento of all the fun stints we had. It was time for serious business.
The market back then was full of marvels you people of today wouldn’t believe. The designs, the colours, the novelty. Stuff made just for the sake of making it (a space-age-looking bike that weighed over 20 kg? Why not?). The left-field weirdness of it all; it was breathtaking.
A lot of these sensations were made in India itself or were imported from one of our Asian neighbours specialising in mass-producing them on the cheap. Brands? Who cared? Sure, there were a couple of big names, but back then, more often than not, the knock-offs knocked off the “real” stuff out of the water with their garage innovations and unbeatable pricing in my part of the world. It was the wild west, and lawsuits here probably meant nothing more than suits wore by lawyers.
Sure, I got burned a couple of times. Things didn’t quite come off as advertised; the shiny exterior not quite in line with the performance. But for every disappointment, there were the ones that lasted years and thousands of kilometres. And things had stepped up too; now I rode with friends, each with their own style and preferences.
Every day felt like an adventure; forever looking for new roads to explore. It was pure, and calling it just a means of fun and entertainment — even as a teenager — would feel diminishing, betraying. It has always been something much more — too subtle, yet profound at the same time, to ever put into a string of words. My life revolved around cycling back then, and not only it instilled in me a sense of wonder and craft, but provided an escape during some really rough patches.
Alas, the clouds sure were gathering on the horizon. There was a sense of gentrification taking over, with a few brands slowly dominating the scene and the old ways of everything-goes dying out, for good and bad. One by one, the friends stopped showing up for rides, until there was barely anyone left. I guess, for them, cycling was never that deep; something they needed to grow out of for fancier toys. Every now and then I would run into someone with the same glint in their eyes for the road, but these encounters felt increasingly rare in my tier-II city.
Then one fine day, I returned from a ride around the neighbourhood and unceremoniously parked my bike behind the house like I had a thousand times before. I would not touch one again for almost a decade.
Distances had grown longer, and it was now decidedly uncool to cover them on a bike. There were parties to go to, love interests to pursue, college assignments to be tackled, test cricket to be watched, and daydreams to be had.
And then came the final nail in the coffin, a move to Mumbai. First as a half-starved perpetually broke post-grad student living in a small hostel room, and then as a half-starved perpetually broke job-holding journo living in a small flat room, the luxury of a having a bike (let alone making room and time for it) never even crossed the mind.
The ties that brought so much joy and comfort once, were now desperately fraying, if not severed altogether.
But as with life, plagues find a way.
In hindsight, it feels almost inevitable. Back home, and after years of wasted youth, I got myself a new bike. The muscle memory returned slowly, and then all at once. The feeling of rubber on tarmac, the sounds of changing gears, the wind in the hair. The cycling gods hadn’t waited for me, but to my surprise, I felt better than ever.
There was an underlying sense of cerebral understanding and appreciation which I never had before. And as much as I still got off the adrenaline rush, a desire to understand the root mechanics had taken hold. Often a ride would turn into an inquiry, and an inquiry into a philosophical what-does-it-all-mean?
It was a pursuit as much to make up for the lost time, as it was to make the most of it now. And in time, it was the bike that wasn’t keeping up.
I consider myself part of the patient genre, a side effect perhaps of being brought up in a constantly on-the-move middle-class household. Whatever the reasons, I was never the one for the latest and the greatest. But by the end of the last year, a long-overdue upgrade to the gear became almost necessary if I were to carry on. It was time to move into the major leagues with a proper road bike.
I will never quite forget the first time I switched the gears on my new ride. The tactility, the weightless sensation, the speed and the airy feel. The effortlessness of it all. I was smiling so hard, my cheeks hurt in the cold dusk air. It wasn’t quite an out-of-body experience, but I might as well have been floating. Of course, I knew this too would get old. And sooner than one might expect. But I also knew now to cherish it all the more for the same.
So here I sit at the turn of a new year, a quarter of this century on, with a new bike and some lessons from the road, looking forward to the rides ahead. Thrilling prospects and tempered expectations.
This isn’t so much a love story, as it is a story about the unexpectedness of life. Of loves lost, and found. Of giving space for things to happen, for stories to tell themselves. I’ve often heard people compare life to a game. If it is indeed one, I guess you have to let it come to you.
