Biking to School- A comedy of sorts©

You never really forget it. It is like Mathematics or swimming. Having extremely “mathematics-is religion” parents was never allowed to leave the former and since I never learnt the latter, I cannot say. But cycling, specially if you have not done it for over 10 years does get rusty.

It all began with the simple wish of wanting to ride to school. Something that is probably innate in everyone. Growing up in Naini Tal, I could never let that ambition flower- the Mall is the only reasonably flat piece of cycle-able ground there. Oh and the middle Ayarpata road. But I had a bike. A grown –up bike too. Which was ridden precisely 23 times between the ages of 10 and 17- I mean school was like a pebble throw away- less than a stones…
And then the Vartman BhimTal move came later- I could ride a bike there, but not to college in NainiTal. So round and round the lake I cycled. Or maybe in the industrial estate.
Still the deep-rooted ambition to bike to school remained. Something that I could not even dare to utter in oh-so-corporate-image-conscious-MBAs-in-the-making-classmates in Delhi.
[“A bike” and those smirks that implied only a milkman- and that too an impoverished one at that who would even think of having one.]

They say the more you reach your late twenties the more your childhood fantasies resurface. Things buried deep in our psyches have this way of coming back when we least expect them.
Yes, I admit it, the temptation was too great. I got me a bike… Yes, I resisted valiantly. I fought the feeling, thought about the ridicule, listened to “You need to think big” (mentally of course)
And found that people actually supported it- at least on the face. That is the nice thing. No one in America really cares about if you are making a fool of yourself( actually no one anywhere does, but one begins t care a lot more about what people think..)

And let me tell you. It was difficult. My legs revolted. The heady freedom of the wind in my hair was completely overcome- the first week or so by the ache in muscles that had conveniently gone to sleep over the years under layers and layers of lard. They DID not like being shaken out of that slumber. AT ALL.

Turning corners was a scary nightmare. You know the fear of falling even if you are going slower than you do while walking. It is an age thing, I tell you, at 7 it does nto matter. At 27, it is mortifying.

And I learnt one more thing,. Even though the suffragettes may have used the Bike a lot( a lady even named her’s Gladys- for the heady freedom it offered her) and women’s bikes- with curved frames were developed to accommodate skirts, you CANNOT wear a skirt on a bike. At least not an ankle- length one. Or maybe those ladies of the days of yore had inbuilt Velcro, or it was a kinder gentler wind in those days. I am still recovering from the indignity and precariousness of the riding to school( 2.5 miles) keeping the garment in place with one hand and steering with another. At one stage. I just got off and wheeled the bike to school and back!

But there are compensations. I coasted up and down a hill the other day. Full speed and no brakes( have stopped pulling on them too much- in biking and in life now) It was like flying.. even more beautiful……..