The Innocence Of Cycling

If you are considering taking up the extremely healthy activity of cycling, please carry on reading. For posterity’s sake, I shall start with reminiscing about cycling during my childhood. In the next article, I shall advise you on how to make correct technical choices in order to enjoy safe cycling.

Pre-historic times

My pre-kindergarten memories remain those of a colourful tricycle, and then a four-wheeled metal car that moved when I pushed two pedals under my feet. Both were made out of metal, as was the manufacturing norm in those days.

My parents dutifully purchased both of these items from Nila Gumbad—the bicycle market  outside Lahore’s Anarkali Bazar. 

I do not recall if my younger sister ever fought to pedal any of these beauties. I was happy to see her comb her dolls’ hairs, and she felt elated watching me crash the baby-car into various pieces of furniture, thus expending excess boy-energy.

I was born with a bronze spoon in my mouth, meaning, the parents exercised firm control over money. This quickly taught me to save in order to buy the objects of fetish and desire. My bank was always a clay money-box (ghalla) that I purchased from a potter (kumhaar) in Mozang bazar. Nobody I knew called them ‘piggy-banks’.

Although the age of unbreakable plastic was upon us, it was far more exhilarating to break open a clay money-box. Overcome by great ideas of self-financing certain plans, I spent many an afternoon counting coins if not counting crows. Somehow, the counting always stopped short of the desired target of a hundred rupees—the equivalent of ten thousand rupees today.

Seeing the shortfall, mother handed over the metallic treasure to father who opened his home-office cupboard, and magically turned the change into a crisp hundred-rupee ‘Qaid-e-Azam’ (slang for a hundred-rupee note because it sported the face of Pakistan’s founding father, Mr. Jinnah).

The boyish curiosity led me to discover that father trusted a dead Irish playwright with his stash of cash; the money was kept under lock and key, hidden behind ‘The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde’. Father was, therefore, not a magician but a maestro who made honest hard work look like child’s play.

Life, 1960s style

Pakistan’s bicycle manufacturing industry was at its peak back then, and produced BECO, Sohrab, Rustam and Eagle brands. Bicycles far outnumbered motorcycles in Lahore. People were healthier because they covered on foot considerable distances each day. That meant greater wear and tear on shoes and hence more cobblers around street corners.

At my school’s bicycle stand behind the canteen, it was hard to ignore hundreds of bicycles that both the students and the teachers used. My father too walked briskly between home and the High Court. As children we gladly used our legs, tongas or rickshaws for commuting; never throwing tantrums for a family car.

The decision to buy my first bicycle was sudden. It took the proceeds of two clay money-boxes to finance the purchase. The excitement was sky high; I was only eleven years old at the time.

At a shop in Nila Gumbad, my eyes ignored the dull black and the shocking red colours; instead I chose an olive-green 18-inch Sohrab. It cost Rs 250 which was enough money to take care of a year’s school-recess snacks, namely, two samosas and a bottle of Coca Cola worth one rupee.

Since so many decades, this samosa-Coke yardstick has helped me determine money’s value and inflation. Another very useful yardstick is the price of petrol in 1972, which was Rs 4.5 per gallon, or Rs 1 per litre. Fifty years later we are paying a hundred times that price. Now work out the inflation per annum.

First love

Taking my eyes off the new bike was impossible; she came fully clothed in protective corrugated paper covering. I brought the beauty into the bedroom and stood her on the rear-wheel stand. Intoxicated by the smell of rubber and painted metal, I let her stay right beside the bed to help me sleep better.

The next day, the neighbourhood boys dropped by to ogle at my shining Sohrab.

I normally cycled within the locality’s confines but when parents were oblivious, ventured to the nearby Regal Chowk to either snack on a plate of Aslam’s dahi-bhallay or Khan’s samosas and aloo ki tikki. The latter were fried in fragrant mustard oil which lent them great taste. We were several decades away from consuming obesity-inducing junk cooking oils such as palm, sunflower or Canola.

Cycling was a male-dominated activity, and only in posher localities did young girls pedal but with much less confidence and always within certain geographical limits.

Second love

The bike was a metal slave that served me well. Each year I raised the seat-post by an inch, and when it reached the limit after three years, the frame felt quite small. I again chose an olive-green beauty, a taller 22-inch Sohrab , whose twin top-tubes lent greater strength to the frame.

By this time, we had our first car: a 1300 c.c. model 1971 Ford Escort. It cost Rs 18,500. It was bluish-green in colour, and whenever the body got scratched or dented, the paint-shop technician at Ali Automobiles on The Mall found it quite difficult to recreate the precise hue.To give you an idea of how much value a Pakistani rupee carried, my paternal aunt (phopho) purchased a made-in-Japan Toyota Corona in 1968 for Rs 12,000. Today, a bicycle would cost more.

In the mid-1970s, I secured a scholarship to study at Government College (Lahore). The faithful Sohrab, having served the purpose, suddenly felt odd. Whereas previously I could walk to the school, traversing greater distance to a place of higher learning required a quicker means of transportation. Bus travel was troublesome, the family car was mostly under father’s use, and there was peer pressure to buy a motorcycle.

The bike mistry

Two bicycle mechanics worked nearby; their real names escape my memory. Only one lingered on for many years; he was simply known as mistry jee. Come rain or shine, he earned his living under the shade of a peepal tree located next to the gate of our lane 3 on Temple Road.

For more details, read these articles:

Puppu Darling Of 3 Temple Road (Part-1)

Puppu Darling Of 3 Temple Road (Part-2))

Attired in a loin-cloth (dhoti), he wiped off facial sweat with the lower portion of his oil-stained shirt (qameez). To clearly indicate what business he was into, he displayed a worn bicycle tyre high on the peepal tree-trunk. With tools scattered on the ground and fingernails permanently filled with the dirt of eons of hard labour, he consumed his afternoon meals with those very hands.

His open-air workshop remained low-tech but extremely useful to all the cyclists. Mistry jee fixed whatever needed fixing on my bike sometimes using bare hands much like a hammer. Whenever someone’s bike ball bearings were found worn out and required replacement, he announced in Punjabi: Aeday kuttay fail ho gaye nay (literally, the dogs have failed). What he meant was the bearings had failed. Nobody questioned why the slang for ball bearings was dogs.

Employing child labour never was a problem in Pakistan. How else could the poor eat? Mistry jee had an amazing young assistant (‘chota’) who pumped air into peoples’ tyres for free. The child being very short for the large-sized floor-pump, pulled up the handle and then jumped into the air to bring the stomach’s weight down on it. The more air he filled the better he could fill his poor stomach.

Right after finishing college, I was fortunate enough to secure a very respectable and well-paying job that required I move out from Lahore (the 'cultural centre of Pakistan’) to characterless Islamabad (the Federal capital).

Whenever I visited my parents, old mistry jee greeted me at the lane’s entrance with a smile that was fast becoming toothless. He was always glad to hear I was flying high in life. Towards the end of his hard life, mistry jee’s eyesight became cataract-ridden. Forever etched in memory shall remain his dark glasses, looking at things from a very close range, and working even harder as if time was running out.

Now I fix my own bicycles at home. Sometimes when I face a problem, I imagine old mistry jee standing right beside. He always lends free invisible guidance.

The scene

As boys we went all over Lahore without ever feeling deprived or unhappy. I did not ride to school because it was at stone-throw distance. The bike only came in handy when I visited friends at the Upper Mall Road or the G.O.R. Sneaking out on a family car was considered punishable defiance by all fathers but a show of great courage by peers.

The citizens back then had plenty of regard and fear for the traffic police; the sergeants rode powerful Harley Davidson motorcycles. The tonga-walas displayed side lights on their horse-carriages and cyclists too used headlights while riding at night.

To emerge as a law-abiding citizen, initially I invested in a Chinese battery-operated headlight. The cheapest cells came from a brand called Chanda—the costlier one being 5-Stars.

Watch the Chanda TV commercial HERE.

I added to the handlebar an imported chromed Japanese bell whose lovely ring still echoes in my mind. Then came a set of better head and tail lights. These were dynamo-operated. The faster I rode, the brighter the lights became. To see how it all worked, click HERE.

Cycling games

One could not be sad while riding a bicycle. Those who could not afford to own bicycles or needed them for only short periods, came to mistry jee for rentals at eight annas (half a rupee or fifty paisas) per hour. Poorer children, whenever they had spare change, always rented adult-size bicycles. The very young who could not ride properly seated, did the qainchi. I cannot explain the novel technique in words even if I tried; it is best to watch THIS VIDEO.

Then there were some who raced worn-out tyres and dreamed of owning bikes. Watch THIS VIDEO to see how that was done.

To prove useful about the house, I occasionally fetched grocery items from the nearby Saffanwala Chowk or bread from Beadon Road. The plain (sada) bread cost eight annas and the ‘milky’ one only ten annas.

Although riding aimlessly remained the main activity within the narrow confines of our lane, there was one game which we boys regularly played: ‘slip’. This is how it went.

Imagine yourself merrily pedalling away when suddenly another cyclist blocks the path. His manoeuvre seems to be working to your disadvantage because there is no place to escape. Both the obstructer and you slow down to almost a standstill. You balance the bikes while seated but force one another to put at least one foot on the ground. If you can pedal to escape or outdo the opponent in a standstill, you win.

The ‘slip’ taught the boys how to deal with surprise attacks, and achieve greater balance later in life.

A close call

One Sunday morning I dared to pedal to aunty Maria’s place in far-away Cantonment (chaoni). Although luxurious bungalows now stand on this road, in those days there stood an army Mess and a row of barrack-like living quarters for junior officers. Aunty Maria, my mother’s youngest sister, was married to Lieutenant Sajjad Hussain of the Army’s Ordinance Corps.

Double-decker buses plied The Mall in those days. The ones marked ‘1 - R.A Bazar’ ran between the Lower Mall and the Royal Artillery bazar. Courting adventure, I cycled towards Saddar bazar. While making a careless U-turn I was hit by a slowly moving double-decker. I was airborne for a few seconds; such was the deadly push from the bus’s front bumper. The angry driver flung a Punjabi insult at me that I failed to comprehend.

I pedalled back so fast to aunty Maria’s place onlookers thought I had stolen the bike. Out of breath, I narrated the entire episode, with special emphasis placed on, “But what did the driver mean when he said——?”

She did not explain but hugged me hard with a loud laughter. ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing) had not yet been invented.

The situation today

For the next few decades, I kept improving my road sense in the hope that my fellow countrymen too would emerge as the most disciplined race on the face of the earth. How much ‘unity, faith and discipline’ we possess after seventy-three years of so-called independence is evident from our chaotic vehicular traffic.

These days I cycle for fitness and in the early mornings. I do encounter motorcyclists who openly violate the rules, recklessly ride on the wrong sides of the roads, sometimes head straight at me, and habitually turn abruptly without indicating. I think we are wasting huge sums of money on marking driving lanes on the roads. It will be better not to have roads but rather large patches of paved surfaces to do as we please.

Despair not; despite all the odds, cycling is great fun if you know your limitations, care for obvious health benefits, and wish for the happiness of childhood days to return.

Do listen to this classic pop song by Queen from 1978: Bicycle Race

Stay tuned for the next article: A Beginner’s Guide To Cycling.

- - to be concluded - -

Also read my other articles on cycling:

1. Refurbishing An Old Bicycle
2. A Beginner's Guide To Cycling

© Tahir Gul Hasan, 2021