by Anupama Krishnakumar
[box]“This is a true story. A story about some bicycles, mopeds, scooters. And me. And how our lives have criss-crossed from when I was as young as five,” writes Anupama Krishnakumar, fondly recalling memories of cycles and two-wheelers she has grown up with since childhood.[/box]This is a true story. A story about some bicycles, mopeds, scooters. And me. And how our lives have criss-crossed from when I was as young as five.
It all began with a BSA Champ, a red one, to be more precise. Even after so many years, the image of that first ever vehicle that I owned is distinct in my memory. It had this inverted U metallic back with a column of equidistant circles on both sides of the metallic rim to ‘adjust’ the height of the seat. A few photographs from my childhood years inevitably feature me with this cycle – either sitting on it or standing beside it.
To think that this was just the beginning of a life interspersed with two-wheelers is both amusing and interesting. As a child who didn’t have too many friends in the neighbourhood and being not the very talkative types, I realise that I took to riding the cycle in and around the house with high enthusiasm and energy. Looking back, it filled me with a sense of satisfaction; it was that indulgence that suffuses a very sweet kind of peace within you. Of course, this is something I would have perhaps not been able to articulate as a child but I realised this in fuller measure when I lived in Chennai and used to cycle down to school from the bustling T.Nagar area through the ever busy, arterial Mount Road – past the U.S. embassy, Sapphire bus stop and finally Peters Road to the posh Gopalapuram area.
This cycle was the second one that we owned and one that I used for many years. It was a BSA SLR – tall and elegant and deep brown in colour. 
My father initially bought it so my mother could learn cycling around the time I was about eight and was busy and contented with my BSA champ. Eventually, when my mother learnt cycling and graduated to driving a TVS Champ moped, being the first daughter and all that, I sort of inherited the SLR by default. The experiences with this cycle have been very varied ranging from something as ethereal as racing on it back from school, dripping wet, with the rain lashing hard on my face to something as morbid as being hit by a car bang in the middle of Mount Road!
The third cycle to feature in my life was an Atlas Goldline (again a shade of brown, I don’t know what it is with me and browns and reds especially when it comes to two-wheeled things!). This was one of my very first possessions that I carefully scrutinised and picked up as my companion of four years when I landed as an extremely proud first-yearite at BITS, Pilani along with my equally proud parents who had accompanied me on my first ever trip to the place of my dreams, to help me ‘settle down’. I evaluated various parameters and decided to go for this cycle primarily for the way its handle bar was designed – it particularly reminded me of my good old SLR and filled me with a sense of comfort; also given the fact that I am a tall being, I felt those bike-looking Streetcat type of cycles would only spell more trouble for my already vulnerable back. So bingo! I was the owner of a bicycle yet again and as if to stamp my ownership and authenticate the cycle’s identity among numerous such cycles that would stand lined up outside the institute during class hours and among the ones that would stand dignified in the hostel, the cycle-wala at the famed Nutan market of PIlani painted my name on the chain guard of the cycle, as if etching it for eternity.
Ah, memories! Those four years as an engineering student, living away from home, are perhaps the most memorable years of my life. When I look back fondly at those years, the cycle inevitably features in the imagery that forms in front of my eyes – girls couldn’t have done without a cycle – we needed them to commute between the hostel and the institute. Of the many, many memories that surround the cycle, one of them is that of cycling through thick fog with zero visibility during the winter months for the 8AM, first hour classes! And of course, there was this art that we all learnt to master – of negotiating the path of our cycle rides in the road to avoid ‘being blessed’ with bird shit from atop the trees that lined either sides of the campus roads. But the moments I absolutely loved were the solitary rides that I used to take around the campus during late evenings. Those were priceless instances of self-introspection, of collecting oneself, of bringing together scattered thoughts emanating from a confused mind and finding peace in quiet as the legs pedalled about rhythmically.
After four years of a beautiful association that saw me lending the cycle to close friends during an hour of need, sulking on encountering a flat tyre during the most crucial times, attempting to fill air into the tyres on one’s own, or simply feeling overjoyed at the sight of the cycle in the hostel shed on returning to campus after a long vacation, I finally had to part with the cycle when I was leaving campus once and for all. I sold it with a heavy heart to a fellow who worked at the Pilani post office, for one-fourth of the price I bought it for. And my words to him as he wheeled my cycle away were ‘Please take good care of it. I maintained it well when it was with me.’
As much as one hears talks of the need to remain ‘unattached’ to worldly things, I have seen myself grow attached to the two-wheelers that have
been a part of my life. And that includes my father’s scooter – a cream coloured Bajaj Chetak that indeed stood for what the ads symbolised it as – the luxury item that a middle class family could boast of. The scooter was a few months older than my sister and remained with us till seven years back. I always thought that the Chetak had a very cute, round face (somehow I like to consider them as living things; perhaps it’s the fondness for them which is at work!) and my father had a typical way of bringing it to action. He would tilt the scooter to the left, hang on for a few seconds and then kick start it and lo, the cream beauty would roar into life, spurting gentle fumes as Dad worked with the accelerator! I also vividly remember the two seats that it had; one, kind of heart shaped or the father’s seat and the other, shaped like a rectangle or the mother’s seat. When I was still small enough to wedge between the two seats, I would literally do that – sit in that teeny-weeny space between my father and mother and my sister would stand in the front. And so we were this picture of a perfect, ‘we two, ours two’, well-educated, reasonably well-off middle class family, out for that occasional, much-sought-after family outing!
And like every other woman from urban India, I did get my two-wheeler driving license a few years down, not by going to a driving school and 
learning on those silly-looking Sunnys but by confidently driving my mother’s TVS Champ. In retrospect, this moped was just that – a motorised cycle, complete with pedals and all that, but I still think it was way better than Sunny (that one was more or less a cycle with a motor!) and my grandfather’s black Luna, which remained one of his proudest possessions till we did away with it and brought in the TVS Champ. I have really fond memories with the Champ because my mother and I used to go out frequently on it and we would even take turns and occupy the driver’s seat! The funniest bit was the maximum speed that it could muster was a mere 32 km/hr! Starting this vehicle would invariably be a test of strength for both of us, for, more often than not, it would spring into action only after we have attempted pushing the pedal a minimum of five times. We used to go shopping and visiting relatives on it; my mother would drop me at my examination centre during the twelfth board exams and I would drop my mother at the school that she used to work with, with great ease, thanks to the moped!
The last but perhaps the most significant two-wheeler of my life is the one that I bought for myself when I began working. It was a TVS Scooty Pep, bright red, and literally the apple of my eye, even today. I still own it and it has been with me for ten years now. I bought the vehicle when it was introduced into the market in 2003, literally through recommendation and influence from a distant relative who held a high position in TVS and mine was perhaps one of the first of the Scooty Peps to hit the roads! The charming lady (I have always perceived my Pep to be a ‘she’, a very daughterly affection) would invariably make heads turn on Bangalore roads and those used to be such proud moments for me! I could sense some of my office colleagues and Paying Guest mates go green with envy. I remember waiting and waiting with bated breath for two whole months to make her mine and my independence just found a totally new meaning with the arrival of this vehicle! My Scooty Pep showed me the joys of driving an elegant two-wheeler and I quite felt like I had conquered Bangalore roads, whizzing past other vehicles in Inner Ring Road, and driving down to as far as Electronic City. Well, the Pep was also my partner in action as I roamed the whole of Chennai as a post-graduate journalism student. Ah, those were days!
Today, I don’t ride the Pep as much as I used to and would in fact love to (the Bangalore traffic gives me the creeps, though!) but I occasionally take my son for a small ride around where we stay. The Pep is one vehicle that has seen me through the ups and downs of my life in the last ten years and for all the madness in the statement that I am about to make, I like to admit that it is sincere – My heart still melts at the sight of her and I often wonder what would life have been without her and all the other scooters, mopeds and bicycles that made their ways in and out as I grew up. Definitely bland, I would say, for, they were nothing short of adorable memory markers.
Anupama Krishnakumar loves Physics and English and sort of managed to get degrees in both – studying Engineering and then Journalism. Yet, as she discovered a few years ago, it is the written word that delights her soul and so here she is, doing what she loves to do – spinning tales for her small audience and for her little son, bringing together a lovely team of creative people and spearheading Spark. She loves books, music, notebooks and colour pens and truly admires simplicity in anything! Tomatoes send her into a delightful tizzy, be it in soup or rasam or ketchup or atop a pizza!
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