Reflections of a bicyclist-3

Bithoor also had its own share of wilderness. This was inhabited by monkeys- langurs, I think. They have black faces, slender long grey bodies and facial features of an old man. As they squat on the ground, their backs straight up, they reach waist high. With a flick of their long hands they can easily reach out to your face. They are aggressive animals and are not afraid of humans. I remember once trying to approach them. They were so human in their appearance, I was misled into believing that I could sit by their side for a friendly chat. The animal snarled and reached out to my face. I was taken aback and remember retreating very confused. I dared not go near them on later occasions.
There was also an amusement park with various play things for children. Most of these were in a run down condition. There was a merry-go-round there. It was just a circular platform pivoting around a central pillar. You were expected to hold its rim and run around and as the thing picked up some speed you could jump on to the platform and take a ride. Alternatively, you could ask a friend to give you a few turns. Actually something was wrong with its bearings so the platform did not rotate in a plane but climbed a bit at one part coming down with a gathering momentum a while later. I remember climbing on to it and my three friends giving me a turn. Then suddenly they decided to give me a ride of my life and gave it more and more speed. The platform lurched upward and came down with every rotation and I had to hang on to overcome the centrifugal forces. I clung on with growing excitement, my biceps straining. Then I put my foot down on the ground to break the movement and it halted with surprising ease!
Amidst all this activity, I also finished my M.Sc. in Chemistry. It was time to return home. I was thinking of doing my Ph.D in the same department, but a friend told me to explore Indian Institute of Science (Tata Institute) at Bangalore. So I packed my bicycle away and then left for Bangalore. That was the last I saw of my father’s Raleigh. The Railways misplaced it. For nearly six months after reaching Bangalore, I kept enquiring after it. I always got a negative reply. Then I stopped making enquiries. A further six months later when I went to the railway yard, I was told that it had just come within days of my last enquiry and they had kept it for several months. The demurrage had grown to over Rs.400 and so they had given it away to an Air Force person, whose bike too had been lost and who was making frequent enquiries. The person at the yard was very sympathetic and offered me any of the numerous bikes that were lying around, their owners, like me, in the dark about their arrival. I looked around- none of them was a Raleigh, none in a good shape and I declined the offer.