It was a rather rare opportunity that presented itself in the form of me riding my Son’s bicycle all the way from the shop to home….a distance of 4 kms. Initial, thought of Oh..how will this 26 inch thing fit into my car…oh Do I now have to hire a tempo..oh now where do I find a tempo… what should I do. My thoughts raced whilst my super excited son was jumping, dreaming of himself on the two wheels joining his friends racing them to the line..I was perplexed, confused, amazed that I had many a choice of how to get the bicycle home but amused at the innate inability to make a decision. And lo out of the blue, it struck; the Sherlock in me kind of reverberated…”Elementary my dear…” Why don’t you just ride it home!!!! Happy with myself and with a pat on my back, I echoed my thoughts to my Spouse and said as a matter of factly” yeah..I will ride it home…”
“Are you sure? Have you gone bonkers? Can you do it? But what about traffic? Can we not....” was the next few lines of conversation that followed. I reasoned with her the best I could, and set to rest her worries. The battle won, I handed over the car keys to her and I got on to the bicycle. Reminding myself that I should be on the extreme left of the road as against the tendency of being on the right, as was ensconced in my mind post the years of driving a car.
And I started pedaling, the first few meters a bit wobbly, but soon settled well into the rhythm. Boy, was I not excited…reminded of my younger years. I was very watchful wading through the pedestrian traffic, mindful that I should stick to the left, mindful that I could “triinnggg trinngg…” my way forward. I pedaled and pedaled furiously at that, wanting to see how fast I could go while the traffic around whizzed past on my right.. My legs were working at quite a brisk pace…I looked to my left and then to my right…and then it struck me….as if I were watching a movie in slow motion…the hero and the heroine taking ages and ages to run to each other arms in very slow steps ..the slow motion effect.. The dream that I often get (in slow motionJ), when I am running on the railway platform to catch the train that has already started moving… the mind egging to run faster…to traverse the elusive distance to the last compartment of the train, but the deadened iron laden feet would not budge, with the face drenched in beads of sweat, the distance between me and the last compartment ever so widening…
On the bicycle, suddenly that evening, everything appeared to have slowed down…my destination appeared to be quite far off, even whilst I was huffing and panting…working up the speed. A realization of having all the time in the world dawned. I realized and thought, oh how beautiful it was was to experience the slow-ness, how beautiful it was to grab the moment where it felt that time was in my control…Thoughts went back to my childhood when my cousin and I would cycle down a few kilometers across the paddy fields of Kovvur on our Grandads bicycle by the banks of River Godavari, finally reaching the train tracks, sit down for whatever time that we could care, watch the Howrah Mail and the Coromandel Express fly by…breathing the fresh air, enjoying the greens and riding back slow through empty roads save the occasional tricycle that came our way or a rare Ambassador that went past…
How I wish I could have all that time in the world and experience the Slomo again and again and again…..
Prasanna Meher Nori
7th July 2013
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