the age of bicycles

Two weeks back, I was at Robin Cinema hall, where the manager gifted me three posters of B-grade films, souvenirs for life. When I asked him why the hall did not have posters, he said in earlier times, a groom got three things for dowry – HMT watch, Murphy radio and bicycle. All the bicycles were tied with a long chain and there was no need for a parking lot.

A week back I went with a friend to Daryaganj from ITO, to buy an African drum. On our way back, we decided to take a cycle rickshaw back. The distance is barely half a kilometer. The guy refused, “I had gone that side in the morning and the cops made me carry bricks on my rickshaw for four hours.”

Yesterday, I met Mark Tully and asked him how Delhi looked like in 1965. “Oh it was a city of bicycles,” his face lit up, “and there were rickshaws and tangas. Car was a vintage sort of a thing.”

Cycle market still exists in Jhandewalan and it seems they are doing good business, but one doesn’t come across even ten cycles during the day. Tully’s statement took me back to my school days, which is not very long ago, when we craved to buy the latest bicycles. I was incorrigibly envious of my brother because he owned a sleek BSA Street Cat while I had a regular Atlas model. He said he felt like Street Hawk on his Street Cat. I made up with my speed and I still like to believe that I used to cover five kilometers in five minutes. The parking lot had more cycles than the number of students, and pranksters would once in a week push a cycle, and everything would come crumbling down. This time when I went to school, there were the latest bikes, and cycles only a couple of dozens. Even campuses like JNU and IIT have lost their cycle; their pulse has shifted to Pulsar. I had inherited a cycle from an IIT friend who went to the US. I still proudly tell that my cycle was stolen in the first week of its inheritance. Now I leave my scooter here and there, but no one steals it.

A friend made a very interesting observation that as the wheels get broader, it gets tougher to paddle. The power then shifts to the fuel – who can buy how much fuel.

There is a sweet little song by Katie Melua which goes like this : There are nine million bicycles in Beijing / That's a fact / It's a thing we can't deny /Like the fact that I will love you till I die. The nine million cyclists of Peking are peddling their goods across the world. Very soon the two million cars of Delhi will have the Made in China tag, which everything else already has.