BICYCLE THIEF

This is not about Vittori De Sica's1948 all time classic movie Bicycle Thieves. It’s a short story with the Queen’s immortal song in between episodes.

Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

The story started somewhere in mid sixties when a brat, a spoilt brat, had just started running around. As part of the family heirloom, he inherited a tricycle…rickety and rusty, one that had been passed on to him after his two elder sisters had outgrown the same. Fashion had by then changed ,even if slowly, for our brat had seen someone in the neighbourhood using a scooty where you put one foot on the slim base and with the other you push ahead with hands on a handle that was high and easy to hold. Tantrums were thrown for many a day to remove the back seat of the tricycle. The father bought peace in the house and took it to the cycle store nearby who removed the back seat after much struggle and breaking a saw blade.  The lad had just stolen his first bicycle victory.

Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

In no time with just 5 paise per 30 minutes of hire, the lad graduated to a bicycle without any supporting wheels at the sides. The expertise kept improving to the extent that slowly he started hiring bigger bicycles where his foot would never reach the ground. The latest fad was riding big bikes with crossed legs and half strokes of the pedal… scissor cut you may call it. Next the focus shifted to sitting on the back seat because sitting on the rod in front was baby like. This the parents would not agree to no matter how much he wailed. One day the opportunity came in the form of an army havaldar who worked in the Ministry of Defence with the lad’s mother and came to deliver something from the army canteen. The mother after much persuasion agreed for a short ride for him on the back seat. Wow…it felt so big sitting at the back waving to friends who were looking at him in awe. As luck would have it, good things in life don’t stay for long. As the ride was coming to a close, a scooter drove by with gusto and somehow the lad’s legs which were so far coiled below the driver’s seat opened and one of them went into the wheel….aaaahhaaa….this time the cries were for real. These cries were of intense pain as the leg got stuck in the rim and spokes of the big Hercules bicycle. Even to this day the scars of the injury remain near the right ankle. A painful victory for a stolen victorious ride.

Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

I want to ride my bicycle

No sooner had the lad got better than the next demand came but he was asked to stay away from riding for some time. This time the Battle of Cycle Rim began…having seen a number of his colony friends putting a stick to the centre and rolling the steel rim was a fascinating sight…how could he be away from life, he thought! The parents just put their foot down on this demand. “we’ve put you in the best missionary school in the city and you want to roll the rim on the streets? Na, Na! Ekdom na.” By now the boy knew how to make Na to Haan. Using sentimental stuff that always works with parents, trying to be a good boy doing his homework daily and helping mother with some errands like getting things from the nearby market…the father reluctantly bought him a rim….heavenly delightful! Wroooom…with bare feet and a simple wooden handle, the speed at which the rim would go was phenomenal as compared to the usual rubber wheel and the sound it made always made heads turn. Ta Ra Rim Pum Pum to another steal.

Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

I want to ride my bicycle

I want to ride my bike

The longest battle in history was possibly the Hundred Years War between the English and the French but the Bicycle War at home that erupted soon after was no less. The demand was now for a proper colourful Hero Cycle…small, beautiful and stylish. Even though the mother was dilly dallying, the father on this one point was adamant. This time the otherwise pampering father just would not budge. Both the father and son had Saturdays off. With mother off to office and with no fear of physical battering, most Saturdays, if not all, turned into a battle ground between an aggressive son and a defensive father. Lying on the floor with hands and legs being thrown about were the starting points of agitation which later went at times into a sort of blackmailing event with the son threatening to commit suicide by jumping off the water tank situated nearby if his demand was not met. The suicidal streak possibly was not strong enough but on this point the father just wouldn’t give in. Later on, the lad heard from someone that the father, when he was young, had lost two of his cousins who were crushed by a truck while riding a bicycle. He would never sit on two wheelers even if someone offered him a lift. So what? “Everyone who had a cycle would not end up having accidents. Why should it happen to me?” he said as the tussle continued for days, months and years. Bicycle stalemate for once.

Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

I want to ride my bicycle

I want to ride my bike

I want to ride my bicycle

Finally after many, many and many years when the boy turned 15, a blue coloured Hero bike was presented as a birthday present by the father with a caveat- do not venture to the main road, just ride it in the colony. The rule was followed for a few months and as the final exams got over, it was summer vacation and the season to breaking rules had come. In the peak summer of Delhi, rides began from RK Puram to Malviya Nagar and sometimes to Lajpat Nagar and back.  For those who are not familiar with Delhi’s topography, one such round would be 40 plus kilometers. A few coins in the pocket just to have water from the vendor who would push the plunger down and out came cold, icy water was all it needed for the long rides. Today when you see young kids in the colony looking like gladiators before going into the arena with smart colourful helmets, elbow and knee guards and beautiful bottles attached to their bikes, it seemed absolutely caveman existence in those days. Although it felt good initially having your own nice bike but since the gap between the want and the getting of the same was so long that the euphoria did not last long. Soon the bicycle lay on the 3^rd floor landing unattended for days and months with dust all over. In victory, in defeat my bicycle.

Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

I want to ride my bicycle

I want to ride my bike

I want to ride my bicycle

I want to ride it where I like it

By now the lad was a young man preparing for the ISC Board exams when one of his close pals, Murali, one day asked for the bike to go for tuitions from Dr. Rajendra Prasad Road to Pusa Road every evening from one Mr. Kuriakose. Why not my friend? You’ve saved me the ignominy of seeing my prized possession lying unused and in a pitiable state and here you want to use it ,making the lad appear like the mythical giver, Karna. And so the bike went over for use to this friend who was spirited, daring and had an insatiable hunger for adventure. His first long distance travel on the bike was in 1986 post the Bhopal Gas Tragedy when a British activist David Bergman came to Delhi to lead a group of protestors on a bicycle rally to Bhopal. The next long drive was his travelling from Delhi to Bombay, yes it was still not Mumbai yet. He along with another friend would plan such trips and the most famous of all was a bicycle trip to Khardungla, the highest motor able road in the world….all this on a simple city Hero bike which by them was reasonably old. Citius Altius Fortius My Bicycle.

Bicycle races are coming your way

So forget all your duties Oh Yeah

On your marks get set  go

Bicycle races Bicycle race Bicycle race

…I want to ride my bicycle…

The bike travelled a lot but the master stayed back. When the time came to shift from the government quarters to their own house in another part of the town, the bike was sold by the owner for a pittance. Life came a full circle when our hero had a daughter and he bought her a Lady Bird cycle without any fear or hesitation, taught her to ride which she did with finesse and never went riding long distances, always kept the cycle neat and clean and when she outgrew and was shifting to another city, she was happy to give it to the little girl of the dhobi in the neighbourhood…no tantrums, no breaking rules, no selling…but boys will be boys, always. Somehow the beautiful machine called bicycle never stayed with him for long…a Mein Kampf at every stage followed by victory and then the wheel turning and him losing the bicycle. A full cycle of gaining and losing the two wheels just goes on and on.

Who’s been playing this hide & seek? Wonder who’s the biggest bicycle thief after all?