Bicycle No More

From left: Me, riding my Avon Buke from school to home, in Lucknow, sometime in the mid-1980s. And my son, outside the Decathlon showroom in Greater Noida, with his new Btwin ST100 RockRider sometime in late-2021

When I was younger – in school, during my early teenage days in Lucknow – I had a bicycle, an Avon Buke, and I used it to get around everywhere. It wasn’t a fancy bicycle – it was a basic, single-speed bike, like the kind most kids used back then. It did not have a zillion gears, which seems de rigueur these days, but that did not make it any less usable – when you hit a steep incline, you just pedalled harder. No suspension, but you could always pedal around ruts and potholes instead of going through them. And no disc brakes either, but the regular brakes – essentially bits of rubber that would rub against the wheel rims when you squeezed the brake levers – were adequate for the rather modest speeds that my bicycle could do.

I loved my bicycle and took good care of it, polishing and cleaning it once every two or three days to ensure it was always gleaming and ready to go. On its part, the Buke was always reliable, my ever-willing partner in a host of adventures (and misadventures!) of my youth. Every day, bright and early in the morning, in summers and in the winters, I’d cycle down from our house in Aliganj to my school, St. Francis College (7km), and later, Lucknow Christian College (8km). At Christian College, from where I did my classes 11 and 12, my friends and I would sometimes bunk school to go and watch a movie. We'd ride our bicycles to one of the many movie theatres in Hazratganj, where we’d usually buy the cheapest tickets to the latest potboilers being shown there. After that, depending on how much money was still left between us, it would either be a swift ride back home, or a quick ride down to Rovers, a popular fast-food joint near Hazratganj, where we’d feast on mutton or chicken frankies, with a chilled Thums Up to go with it. On the days when there was no money and we had to be more frugal, we’d sometimes ride down to Mathurawalla, a halwai in Mahanagar, where we’d get steaming cups of sweet, milky tea with jalebi, samosa or kachori to go with it. At other times, my friends and I would cycle down to Kukrail forest, a popular picnic spot in Lucknow in those days, and spend hours exploring little trails and forest paths. Dilkusha Garden was another spot that we'd sometimes go to, for a picnic. Everybody in the group would get a packed lunch from home, which we'd share after the long ride on our trusty old bicycles. Those bicycle rides, followed by all that food and drink – just sitting around with friends, talking and laughing endlessly – are some of the happiest memories of my younger days in Lucknow.

Right from the time I was very young, maybe 10-11 years old, I had a deep interest in cars and motorcycles, and especially motorcycle racing. Sometime in the early-1990s, cable TV came to Lucknow and one of my friends, who lived in Alambagh, was the first one in our group to get a cable connection. Now, this friend’s house in Alambagh was 16-17km from my house in Aliganj, but in those days they used to show motorcycle grand prix racing on cable TV, which Doordarshan did not. I was a 500cc GP racing fanatic, a stark, raving moto-lunatic who worshipped the holy trinity of Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey and Kevin Schwantz. And, of course, I simply had to watch every 500cc race, which inevitably meant picking up my bicycle and doing the 35km round trip, from Aliganj to Alambagh and back on Sunday afternoons during the MotoGP season. (Note: It wasn’t called ‘MotoGP’ in those days, and went by the rather longer name of ‘FIM 500cc Grand Prix Motorcycle Road Racing World Championship.’) It didn’t matter how hot it was outside, or how cold, or whether it was raining. I’d just get on and pedal away to glory, and my friend’s parents were kind enough to never object to me parking myself in front of their TV for two hours on Sundays. In fact, whenever I was there, I was treated to tea and hot snacks, which only sweetened the deal further.

Later, when I got into college, I was fortunate enough to get a Yamaha RX100, which my father was kind and generous enough to buy for me, seeing my intense, all-abiding love for motorcycles. That was pretty much the end of my days on the old Buke, which had served me so well for many years, hauling me all over the city – that bicycle was such an integral part of my school days in Lucknow, and I wouldn’t change that for anything. Which surprises me when I see that these days, young kids in school and college simply don’t want to ride bicycles. I had bought a basic Btwin bicycle for me son when he was in the 6^th or the 7^th standard and he used to enjoy riding that, mostly inside our housing society, which is quite large and has ample space for children to ride their bikes.

My son, Shashwat, pulling a wheelie on his new bicycle!

Later, when he was in the 10^th standard, my son asked me to get a better bike for him and I agreed. We went out and bought a new Btwin ST100 RockRider, which comes equipped with too many gears (seven at the rear sprocket, three at the front – I wouldn’t even know what combination to use and when!), telescopic front suspension, chunky tyres and adjustable seat and handlebar. My son used this new bicycle for maybe 3-4 months, after which it has been reduced to a piece of junk that’s been carelessly dumped under a staircase, rotting away slowly to a slow, painful death. It makes me sad – and, I have to admit, a bit angry – to see the bike carelessly dumped, and I have tried to reason with my son (who is now in the 12^th standard and will go to college next year), but to no avail. He simply doesn’t want to ride his bicycle anymore.

Apparently, from what I see all around me, it’s not just my son – most young people these days don’t want to ride bicycles. And one of the reasons for that, by my reckoning, is the easy, instant, 24x7 accessibility of public transport. In my time, all we had in Lucknow, in the context of public transport, was local buses, and shared three-wheelers (called ‘Tempos’) that were slow, noisy, smelly and uncomfortable. So, it was either that or our bicycles and my friends and I happily chose the latter. Things have changed. For my son and his friends and millions of other young people, they’ve discovered reasonably cheap, easily accessible ride sharing apps like Rapido and InDrive etc. Rapido has ‘motorcycle taxis’ as well, which are even cheaper than autorickshaws, and young people use these extensively to get around. Whether it’s going to school, to a friend’s house, to a party, to a movie… or practically anywhere else, schoolkids these just whip out their smartphones, fire up an app, book a ride and off they go. And with digital payment, UPI and wallets etc., they don’t even need to carry cash – payments are easily made via the phone, and kids have become experts at using this whole digital ecosystem.

Yes, ride sharing apps offer a great deal of convenience, but I still feel that at least for short to medium distances, kids should use a bicycle to get around. Using a bicycle to get around, I feel, builds self-reliance and a degree of hardiness, which comes in handy later in life. Also, with apps like Zomato and Swiggy, and the vastly increased consumption of junk food in recent years due to easy accessibility, the least one can do is ride a bicycle every day – even riding just a few kilometres daily would be the healthier option as compared to just hopping on a motorcycle taxi every time you want to go somewhere. Plus, you’d be saving some money by riding a bicycle, and what’s wrong with that? But I know kids these days simply don’t want to ride bicycles and asking / expecting them to ride is simply fighting a losing battle. I, for one, have given up and I’ve been looking for a buyer for my son’s bicycle. That nobody seems to be interested and that I haven’t found a buyer isn’t even surprising anymore.

For me, using a bicycle to get around town, in Lucknow, was magical when I was young. That was 40 years ago. Things have changed. The way kids think has changed. But by not riding bicycles, maybe kids these days don’t know what they’re missing.