Bicycling 🚲

Back in the year 1970s, there was just one normal road connecting Chennai city and Mamallapuram town!

Mahabalipuram, currently a world-famous UNESCO heritage site, even in those years attracted a large tourist footfall 👣

Me and Velu were schoolmates cum fitness enthusiasts and we constantly had this urge to test bicycling 🚲 as a mode of exercising!

The approximate distance between our residential locality to Mahabs (mamallapuram) was 50kms and we made quite a few attempts to cycle all the way!

The high-tech IT corridor (OMR) which currently boasts top-line infrastructure was in those years, lined with scattered hamlets bearing similar locational names as now!

Raleigh bicycle was my pride at that time and Velu had to depend on rental bicycles 🚲

Though our couple of bicycling attempts to Mahabs ended in semi-success and drained Velu's part-time earnings!

We didn't lose our self-confidence and always believed in our ability to succeed!

One major handicap was these rental bicycles since each time they varied in performance due to street fit conditions!

We shared our goal with the rental bicycle shop owner and convinced him to spare a cycle to Velu for a month at the least possible cost!

To our great joy and relief, the good man offered the bicycle to Velu at no cost and patted our shoulders as a sign of encouragement!

Velu took good care of the bicycle 🚲 and we used the huge school ground as our cycling track to practice regularly!

On the 3rd Sunday of the bicycle rental month, we successfully covered one way up to Mahabs but halfway through on the return, Velus bicycle's front wheel got jammed!

A lorry driver took pity on us and helped us to transport the bicycles and us to our locality!

After that, we didn't make any further attempts till I left the school to walk on the path, which my life lay for me!

Today, though Velu is no more, the memories of our bicycling times keep ringing the bell 🔔 in my mind!

Of course, for current bicycling enthusiasts, 50kms is just a cakewalk but for us at that time, it was a challenge!

But, come to think of it, isn't life by itself a challenge?