Of books, chants and red bicycle

Every day at 7 p.m., I go to the gym, dressed in tee and shorts and hop on to my electronic bicycle. Adjusting its various controls, with the ear phones plugged in and loud music numbing my brain, I pedal along for 30 minutes. But this cycle is going nowhere (just like my weight loss program). Oh how I hate this cycle and recall the time when I was not a slave to this and actually had fun riding it.

*instrumental music and flashback*

That was an unusually pleasant summer, though a pleasant summer was what Dehradun had specialised in over the years. Ask the children of Dehradun how they have spent the most exotic summers tormented by their visiting cousins from the Delhi, Gwalior, Kanpur, Lucknow, Chennai for whom it has been a haven with their Grand-dads and Grannies having chosen to reside there .

But for me, well I was fifteen that year and nothing is pleasant during teen age. More over the summer holidays were on and I had been struck down by the most lethal virus the teenagers are prone to. And no, it was not L O V E; it was B O R E D O M.

I had no patience for my elder sister who spent her time being divinely beautiful, being aware of it and thus making life miserable for the chap across the street who was trying to woo her. My elder brother (number one) had no time for me, having been dragged into apprenticeship in my fathers’ construction business. And my elder brother (number two) also had no time for anyone or anything besides worshipping his cricket bat.

Before the holidays began I had been given the choice to spend the summer either at my Daadi’s home at Saha, a village in Haryana or my Naani’s home at Ambala, a small city in Haryana. That was like being given the choice of either being baked in an oven or being poached in a frying pan. And belying my teenage vocabulary, I POLITELY declined both.

‘I am bored’ had become my daily chant. No Buddhist monk is as devout with his chanting like a teenager is with the boredom chant. And the deity at whom the chant is directed at is of course the Mother. Now my mother having borne four kids is a pro at Crisis Management and imparts her pearls of wisdom to all the bejewelled ears at her numerous kitty parties.

However this was not what she had expected to hear from meeee. My teen years so far had passed quietly and uneventfully and my mother had assumed that God had finally listened to her prayers and she had been blessed with a child who would grow straight from childhood to adulthood with no pimples to deal with, no tempers thrown at her, and no crazy ideas of eating her young ones. But little did she know that having four kids is not a sin that can be atoned.

So my chants shocked her into silence (imagine that!) and it took her a while to heed to me and one lazy afternoon nap to come up with the solution. She woke up yelling “Books Books” “Library Library” as if Rudyard Kipling himself had materialised before her eyes.

Not a bad idea at all I thought. So the following morning, riding my shiny red bicycle (named Pony) I landed at Khushiram Memorial Charitable Pustakalaya and Vachanalaya (that’s library and reading room for the uninitiated). Looked more like a haunted mansion to me but the moment I entered it, I fell in love with the place. It was so cool in there, I guess because of the high ceiling. I wish I could go on and describe the architecture, but I think I summed it up when I said haunted mansion. I enquired about the fees, the system of checking out books, magazines and imagine my joy when told that I could take two magazines or comic books for the day and the books were issued for a fortnight.

I told my Mother that the Annual Fee was Rs.150 (yes digest that, Rs 150 annually) and she dished it out of her purse in a blink with kootchie coos and “ O mera padhaku bachcha ” thrown in for good measure. So began my tryst with Archie’s Comics, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, the wonderful world of Ruskin Bond, Kipling, the Bronte sisters, Dumas, Chekov et al.

But the daily rides to the Library were a joy on its own. Didn’t have ears plugged as it was not a time of I-pods. Few had those things called Walkman. My elder brother had one, but it was certainly not meant for me, any ways the batteries had to be funded from the pocket money so was used only on special occasions e.g. saving grace in front of richer cousins from Dilli and Chandigarh.

Hence I listened to the sound that came out of Sharda Sangeet Vidhyalaya (music school) on my way. Bunch of kids banging their instruments in hope of striking at least one right chord during the lesson. The yellow flowers of Amaltas along the road, the aroma coming out of Ellora’s Bakery ( pastry treat at the end of the week) , the Lychee trees weighed down with ripe bunches, their orchards being guarded by sleepy gardeners, were all a part of the ride. Not to mention the young army cadets with their crew cuts, out for the day from NDA making the heads turn of each and every girl in town and the young Buddhist monks in their orange-maroon robes looking so serene.

But the summer ended and so did my rides. Never touched Pony again. By next summer we had moved to a new residence, I had turned 16 and my father gifted me a brand new mini-scooter Bajaj Sunny. This scooter was my first ride into the rat race. It took me from school to tuition and another tuition and another till I landed up here today.

*twang and back to present*

Armed with a professional degree, spending hours after hours in the office I have piled on weight. To shed it , I am here in a gym riding this bicycle, which as I said earlier, goes nowhere. Its grey black colour makes me sad. Maybe tomorrow I’ll tie a red ribbon on it. Just to remind me of my little Pony.

P.S. In case you were wondering what happened to the chap across the street, well he did manage to woo my sister. They are married and have a 15 year old boy now, who’s spending the summer wooing the girl next door. Life does go around in circles. Yes it does.