The Blue Bicycle

It’s a pleasant evening with the Sun going to its hideout and spreading the reddish pink hue in the sky as if the world’s greatest artist had done magic with the paintbrush on the canvas of those fluffy clouds. Calmly striding across the very familiar lane to get my regular ‘chai’ at one of those shops in LH more, I found myself affixed at one short sight of the blue bicycle beside the chai shop. It suddenly strung the chords of my childhood that kept me dangling onto the nostalgia for a couple of minutes. The arrival of “chai” broke the chain of thoughts only to bring me into reality and find the blue bicycle even more amazing with new tyres that’s just been changed in the repair shop.

Allow me to drop in a sleazy confession that I’m a novice in the art of riding a bicycle.

It was the Summer of 2005 when the bicycle bug bit my brother’s adventure nerve and made him go berserk for a new bicycle. After million attempts to convince our father for a new bicycle, we were granted permission just to ride that ‘legendary black HERO cycle’ which my dad thought could be passed on as a legacy; for that was a gift from my grandfather to my dad. But unfortunately the cycle’s rust was stronger that dad’s will that compelled to greet the arrival of our new Atlas cycle with its flashy blue paint.

I can still remember that day when my brother flaunted his cycle by riding in those familiar streets of our busy colony in the evening. It felt good when the kids of neighborhood were awed with the cycle and its brakes and gears. I was young and wanted to try my hands too.

Just to get my hands on those handles and although my tiny legs weren’t reaching the pedals when seated on the seat, I somehow sacrificed the comfort of sitting and reached those pedals only to feel the force of those pedals going up and down and the muscles thrusting them to move forward the vehicle. It was amazing. One moment I was on it, and the next, I was moving along with the cycle and my eyes looking forward filled with happiness with an ear to ear grin. With few rotations by the wheel, I lost my balance and suddenly …. BAM!

I fell on the ground, and as a result of this fall, my iron braces came off leading to a very angry parents and an industrious dentist who carefully worked to build my new braces.

That’s it. There went my first try to vain and since then I never tried for another 3 years with the fear of losing the braces again. Eventually, the bike got old, my brother went to college, and I went to one of those coaching classes where they expect you to study for 18 hours. Today I look at the bicycle and feel what I missed all along. It is one incomplete task and I got this innate feeling to finish it. I returned to my hostel thinking of asking the security guard to borrow his bicycle for a couple of minutes.