Reflections of a bicyclist-2

For my M.Sc. I went to IIT, Kanpur. That was in 1978. By then my Raleigh and me were inseparable. It was also the first time I was leaving home to stay in a hostel. My parents could not figure out why on earth I was dead set on IIT, Kanpur, when I had been offered a M.Sc. seat in every subject in Bangalore University. However they were resigned to my decision. My father put me into the train along with my bicycle, which had to go into the break van at the end of the train. Since my parents were hopeful of dissuading me from going, there had been delays in booking tickets for my journey and I finally found reservations only on what was then called ‘Link Express’. To this day, it remains the most fascinating train.
This train had three parts as it started out of Madras. One part was set to go to Delhi, the second to Trivandrum, while the third was for Hyderabad. It would come to Jolarpettai where it would meet up with a similar train from Trivandrum, having one part going to Delhi, another to Hyderabad and the third going to Madras. The Delhi/ Hyderabad parts would be put together here. The other two parts would meet up with the Link Express on the return journey. Here the Trivandrum-Madras part would be reinforced with the Delhi-Madras and the Hyderabad-Madras parts and proceed to Madras. The Madras-Trivandrum would be reinforced by the Delhi-Trivandrum and Hyderabad-Trivandrum parts and proceed to Trivandrum. Our original train would move towards Delhi, where at another junction called Khazipet, it would meet its counterpart from Hyderabad, having again three parts, one going to Delhi, the other two going (by now you know where) Madras and Trivandrum! Our train would now be bifurcated and the bogies from Madras, Trivandrum and Hyderabad, all going to Delhi would then be connected for the last leg. I will not try your patience with what the other fractions of the train do. I was to detrain at Jhansi and take the Jhansi-Lucknow passenger to reach Kanpur. This train took its ‘Bharat Jodo’ rather too seriously and the guy/gal who thought up this amazing train should have been given a Oscar for contortion. Expectedly, while I made it to Kanpur within 72 hours (by the way I traveled from Bangalore to Madras to catch this train!), my bike was nowhere to be found. It might have gone anywhere- Trivandrum, Madras, Hyderabad or even got stuck in Jolarpettai or Khazipet, where the complicated mass transfers take place.
Amazingly, my bike turned up in the Kanpur railway station approximately a month later. In the intervening period I made many anxious trips to look for it. If only it could narrate its adventures, it could have made interesting reading. I was delighted. It looked a little battered, deflated, dusty and a bit out of sorts. I had it inflated just outside the railway station and rode back to my hostel. The IIT campus is approximately 16 kms (or is it 8 kms?) from the railway station. This was the best ride of my life. I had reclaimed a part of my past. I remember being nearly run over by a buffalo cart. That part of UP has some of the most amazingly buffaloes. They are huge, 20 feet nose to tail or so my impression is. They pull enormous carts- 20 feet long. You overtake these monsters at your own peril, especially if you are going around a circle at the same time. This is what I did. This 40 foot megalith can move at terrific speeds and the back of the cart swings out at you as it turns. These buffaloes can run with surprising agility.
Within the IIT campus, although the hostel and academic areas are located close together with catwalks connecting them, I rarely walked, preferring to cycle my way around. I remember many of my hostel mates also acquiring bicycles after seeing me use one. The sports day always had a bicycle race, which was always won by a character who could have fitted well in a bicycling forum. He rode a bicycle with thin tyres and a drop handle bar. He was thin and his wiry body hunched over his bike in a tight semi-circle. He was often the butt of our jokes. He was doing his engineering in some branch and lived in the hostel across the road from mine. I wonder for all his enthusiasm, if he is still cycling today!
The high point of my bicycling life in Kanpur was the trip we (three class mates) made to Lucknow, a distance of 70 kms. The journey took us nearly the whole day. While we comfortably covered 16 kms in the first hour, fresh from a night’s sleep, the latter part was very tiring. The land is flat in UP, but fierce gusts of wind were blowing slowing us to less than 10 km/hr. The afternoon was very hot and we rested 3-4 hours in the shade of the cane fields. We reached Lucknow, which was then a beautiful city, at 6 PM and went to Aminabad, where we sought shelter in a mosque. We stayed overnight there- the only inconvenience was being rudely woken up from our tired slumber around 3 or 4 AM, the time of the morning Namaz. After the prayers were over, we were allowed to sleep again. The Aminabad market is a lovely place. We toured Lucknow seeing the sights the next day, returned to the mosque for the night and then came back to Kanpur the next day. The return journey was not as tiresome and we were back by 2 PM.
I went with three other friends (one of whom was a ‘free loader’- he did not know how to ride a bike!) often to a place called Bithoor. This was some 23 kms from Kanpur and was the closest point of the Ganga to our campus. My free loading friend always rode behind me on the carrier. He often complained of ‘butt ache’ after each of these rides. I am amazingly in touch with all these guys to this day. One is a senior research chemist in a pharmaceutical industry in the US. The other is a professor of Biochemistry in IMTECH, Chandigarh. My free loading friend is a chemical engineer in Calcutta. Fortunately, he now drives a car.
I have many sweet memories of Bithoor. There was a small animal enclosure there. There I saw for the first time a rhino. It was a mother and baby pair. Rhinos come in two varieties. In one variety, the mother runs ahead of the baby and in the other, the baby leads the way. God has programmed them to run in tandem. This pair was the mother-in-the-lead variety. The enclosure had two trees- one stout and the other a slender twig-like thing. I saw the mother run round the outer perimeter of the enclosure with the baby close on its heels. Since the enclosure was small, the pair would pass the spot I stood at, once every minute or so. I stood admiring the speed of something so large. The rhino must have got bored running around and after a few rounds suddenly turned and ran across along a chord. This took her straight to the two trees. I thought she is either going to crash into the stout tree and bruise her nose (and her chief horn) or trample over the slender stem of the other one. I watched my heart racing and would you believe, how she deftly maneuvered her enormous bulk without so much as even touching either of the trees. She went straight like an arrow until her shoulders and then with a deft flick of her neck got her behind through at an angle. The baby did the same flick of the behind, although it did not need to considering that it was very small and had enough room. This happened many times as she repeated her new course several times over. I am unlikely to ever forget this. I only wish that humans had enough sense to offer such wonderful animals larger open spaces.