Bicycle

Let me start my blogging with a story...a story about a friend... my friend Shiv, who is presently an investment banker somewhere in New York.

I'm writing about something that happened about six years ago, when my family moved to Delhi. I was 17 years old at the time.

It was the first time I was in Delhi, having spent all my life till then, in the East of India, namely Calcutta and (a few years) in Assam. The North, was anything but what I could have expected. I had to deal with extreme weather (the blistering summer and the near freezing winter and not so much as a sign of rains anywhere in between), very unfamiliar North Indian culture and a school environment where I almost always felt I was a misfit (a first for me). Over the 3 odd years that I remained in there, my life was rather uneventful on the whole, but there were some welcome oases that I encountered, mostly in the form of a few good and lasting friendships. The very first of these was Shiv.

We were poles apart to say the least (physically, in our interests in music, our opinions on many matters etc.), but there was something that clicked and we were (and are) good friends. It was something that was very important to me because I felt that there was someone who wanted to speak to me and cared to listen to what I had to say...as it happened we tended to like/dislike the same people and for by and large the same reasons!

The greatest gesture that a friend has ever made for me came one day when, in an idle conversation I mentioned a little hesitantly, that I didn't know how to ride a bicycle. I waited for a roar of laughter (actually, in his case, chuckling...I've never heard him guffaw) and endless teasing...and I wouldn't have blamed him because it wouldn't have been the first time that I'd have been mocked for not being able to ride a bike at 17 years of age. What I actually got was a surprised, even quizzical look and a few questions on whether I was sure that I didn't know how to ride a bike and how this had happened. Frankly, I was a little taken aback and managed to speak a little about somehow never getting the chance or lacking the motivation when I got the chance and about being afraid of falling, etc. He heard all this rather patiently, and all along I did not find a single hint of judgement on his face and I can swear to this day, that the only person who tells this story, is me.

Once my explanation was over, he just thought very briefly and simply announced that he was going to teach me how to ride a bike. My amazement did not quite allow me to digest the vastness of this gesture at the time, but over the next 10 days, it settled in permanently. Each day, after coming home from school, I would go downstairs in the evening and find Shiv waiting patiently with his bike (we lived near each other). Another hour or so would be spent with me huffing and struggling to remain balanced and the poor chap holding the bike from behind, letting me know repeatedly that he would not allow me to fall. It must have been very difficult to hold on to that bike because I was and am much heavier than him...and he never let me go home until I had struggled along the length of a long road several times. This went on for about 10 days, after which I finally learned to ride a bike unassisted and felt for the very first time the associated thrill that most kids experience when they are much younger! Shiv insists till today that I would have mastered the skill a lot faster if I had allowed myself to take a few falls (for which purpose he even made me practice in grassy parks) but my fear or falling was my better in that respect!

However, I'm glad it took that long, because in those days I learned about the unconditional aspect of true friendship. Shiv did not have to help me at all, but he just could not live with the fact that I had not enjoyed a bicycle ride in 17 years of life. He took it upon himself to invest a lot of his time and effort in helping someone he had only known for a couple of months and never asked for a thing in return. When I got my own bike a short while afterwards and we started going on long evening rides all over the neighbourhood, he was happier than anyone.

Till today, whenever someone asks me what friendship means to me, the first picture that comes to mind is of 2 kids cycling down a long path, chatting... laughing...