ZEN AND THE SEARCH FOR BICYCLING RHYTHM Gliding. Silently weaving through obstacles. Effortless. Rhythm. Opening - burst through. Rhythm. Hot knife through butter. Goal in sight and all's well with the world. Nothing we cannot achieve. Now. Now we are invincible. Now in the Lucknow dusk, cycling through the darkening streets, cycling behind the tail-lights of the trucks half visible in the crimson sky. Pedal up, pedal down. Rhythm. Ankling for the best effort. Angle the foot, push. Angle it back, lift. Rhythm. Headlights glare. Darkness. Rhythm. Passersby stare. Ignore. Rhythm. Hole in the road. Bypass. Rhythm. A fork ahead. Veer left. Rhythm. Rhythm. Enthusiasm, energy, tiring, boredom, weariness, fatigue, rhythm, elation, euphoria, rhythm. We have had our ups and downs, and it seems to have taken us a long time to find our rhythm. It seems to be such a long time ago for anything but cycling. It was a hazy morning long long ago when we had started out from I.I.T, fourteen of us, on this trip. It had been dark then - three-thirty in the night. Arindam had to come fetch me as well, because I was late. By the time we get to Rawatpur, we encounter bicycle problems. Sudipto's brakes are touching his wheel. Two kilometers down, a long halt trying to fix the bicycle. Still very dark. The rear wheel is not sitting straight, and we try opening the axle and resetting it. Our tools are inadequate and one of my dumbbell wrenches break - a nifty tool, but too cute by far. We get it temporarily working. A small hurrah and we start off in the gloom behind a couple of hay-laden oxen carts. No rhythm yet, but spirits very high after all that waking up people and banging on doors and the rendezvous in the Hall Two quad. We had held a bicycle checkup and small maintenance workshop last night. Mostly we adjusted seat heights for the right stroke length; anything more complex was identified and sent for repairs to Lallu under the tree. Five people had confirmed for the Lucknow trip, and a few others were asking about the prerequisites. This morning in the half-gloom of the Hall 2 quad, there were about fifteen, but some of them had bicycles too far gone for consideration. Midsems over, things are looking rosy this weekend. The city of Lucknow, 89 kilometers away, beckons. Arindam is on the soccer team, Mahesh and Pranjal are in the swim team, and Manzar plays soccer and throws the javelin. Naresh is the hockey captain. About half are athletes, but the other half - Ravindra, Rohit, Dipankar - myself included - are not particularly fit. There are several smokers. Most of the crew have never gone on any long bicycle rides - not even to Bithoor. Most people have managed to get the drop-handlebar type "sports" bicycles. But some of the bicycles are in bad shape. There is Mani, who is from Bangladesh, and his bicycle has a bad hub or something - it takes a lot of torque to turn that wheel, and it stops pretty quick when you let go. Near the Agricultural University, Sudipto is having trouble again. The wheel keeps going back into its bent configuration. Probably there are something wrong with the hub bearing. No bike shops are open at this ungodly hour and it does not appear we can fix it, so Sudipto turns back, wheeling the bicycle on foot. All of us feel bad. Later I confirm that he had found a bike shop open soon enough and that it was a simple enough repair. So the thirteen of us set off past the HBTI campus, the company bagh chowraha, through civil lines past the towering darkness of the Power House and then Elgin Mills, across the potholes at the railway crossing and onto the Mall road near Meghdoot hotel. We get a little confused near the LIC crossing, but soon we are on the old bridge to Lucknow. The sky is beginning to lighten and the Ganga is visible in patches of misty water between the sandbanks. A small truck with headlights on pushes us to the extreme left on the bridge. We are kept from getting bored by playing the potholes-dodging game. On the meter gauge line is the railway station that the British had named Kanpur Bridge Left Bank, one of the longest names in Indian Railways. Before this bridge was built there was a ferry here run by a contractor, just like the one a few miles up the Ganges that Rudyard Kipling had come to manage. This station is what the Unnao end of the ferry became after the bridge. It is about six thirty now, and the traffic across the bridge is already building up, with the thelas taking their chaat and mumfali to the Mall road. Dawn has lifted our spirits and we roll on through the nearly continuous urban belt between Kanpur and Unnao, past brick factories set in large barren compounds making paints and chemicals. A brief halt for tea and milk, but soon we are back on the road again. We are gradually gaining rhythm - push with the left and simultaneously, smoothly, raise the right. Then push the right. Left, right, lift, push, left, right... A sense of balance, timelessness, continuity: rhythm. In the fractured lives we lead in India, achieving rhythm seems so remote. Every time you think you are getting into stride something disruptive happens. The whole of IIT seems to be off- rhythm, a far cry from the Nehruvian dream of producing engineering analysts and science based engineers that would steer the Indian industry. Instead, we alienate our students from the world they come from, the world they were to serve. The alienation is deep and debilitating, for it attacks the sense of identity, so crucial to confidence. Like Octavio Paz says so elegantly: "an inferiority complex influences our preference for analysis, and the meagerness of our creative output is due to our instinctive doubts about our abilities." To hide our ineffectiveness in achieving what we set out to do, we shelter behind the facade of rules and bureaucracy. Every day our dreams get converted into endless sheafs of paperwork, and the only rhythm one can think of is the monotone staccato of the cyclostyling machine. Even as I was mooting the idea of the bicycling trip several of my colleagues questioned my folly in taking the responsibility for so many students. What if something happens? What if I am served a show cause notice? We are their parents while they are with us, and we must look after their well being. But does that mean being closeted in our cyclostyled cocoon? Shouldn't a good parent be a good friend first? We are born free, but create our own chains. All of us are now busy with our own thoughts that come and go in the clean crisp misty morning air. We join the main highway to Lucknow - it is a better road, a smoother surface, more fun to ride on. Everyone is gradually beginning to find their own speeds. Some of the non-athletic types are beginning to fall behind, and our tight string of bicycles now becomes distended. Naresh and I work out a strategy for bringing up the rear so there would be some support available for the laggards. Many years back, I had taken a bicycle trip in misty days like this. I remember one morning one of my less conventional uncles landed up in my Kharagpur hostel room. He had come from Calcutta on a bicycle and was going to Puri: would I join him? So I chucked up a week of classes and set off on my one-pedalled bicycle (the right pedal was a welded steel rod). We covered the three hundred plus kilometers to Puri in three days, stopping for the night on the truckdriver charpoys at the dhabas. On the way back, we even took the coastal road to Konarak (not complete yet, and often degenerating into the swamps and ricefields). Then we had taken a train back from Bhubaneswar. Somehow none of the longdistance bicycling that I did in the US seems as vivid, probably because things are too organized there, too sterilized and colourless. But perhaps it is the degree of organization in the US that helps one achieve personal rhythm. In one of the most fascinating books I have ever read, a long distance walker, in describing his solo trek along the length of the Grand Canyon, describes the importance of rhythm. The experienced walker walks along with a smoothness of purpose; with each step, he is dislodging much less dirt, and therefore consuming much less energy, than the amateur who thinks he also can walk. The same is true of swimming. As a child learning to swim in the Ganges, I remember my first exposure to the swimming greats at our ghat, and being astounded by how little water they splashed as they glided through the water. Life is like that in the US - you do your work smoothly, you don't intrude on other people's lives. You make no ripples. In contrast, in India, to get anything done you have to trample miles, and disrupt the routines of twenty other people (who were most probably doing nothing anyway). At the same time, there is colour and gaiety in this very inefficiency; you touch more peoples' lives, and boredom is a word that has no place in all Indian languages. It is as if a splashy swimmer is more interesting in the long run simply because he is more vigorous, though achieving less. So - is there something to be said about not having rhythm? Is rhythm a good thing? The city of Unnao is crossed in a blur of crowded vendor- lined streets. There is a minor tiff with a rickshaw and a small halt; we hang around a standard issue white-cement-public-statue- with-bird-droppings, trying to control the verbal exchange from building up too far. Then we are back on the open road, headed for the bird sanctuary that is about twenty km down. Ravindra's knees are hurting - we take a halt, adjust the seat height and try to catch up with the rest. The mood is still upbeat and we are averaging about thirteen kmph by the little digital speedometer on my bike. The Nawabganj bird sanctuary is a disappointment. Some of us take the path around the barbed-wire perimeter - a three km detour. It is not the right time of the year, and not many birds to be seen. Someone says that if we knew more about birds, we could see them better. This I do not agree. This sanctuary is there for people like me, and I measure it by how it satisfies me; otherwise it becomes a self-fulfilling proposition. It is like saying IITs would be better if we got more engineering motivated students. I think it is for us to carry the thrill of engineering to these kids... Back to the road after some snacks at a dhaba. This is the long haul now. The sun is beginning to come out. Gradually we become more and more spread out. Arindam, Kanishk and some others are going ahead. Naresh and I are towards the back. Others are wearing my helmet since I feel bad being the only well-protected bicyclist. An hour or so further, we regroup at a roadside dhaba for a lunch of roti and daalfry. A huge tree is providing shade. We sit along a long table and the man scurries back and forth with rotis and we pass things up and down. Since morning we have already had chai, some dhaba breakfast, and now this lunch. We go drink water from the tubewell, which is sure to be safe, so far from civilization. After lunch, it is really rough going. Somehow, Lucknow seems so distant, and we are beginning to doubt it all. Within an hour, I see Ritesh Gupta latching on to a truck for a ride. This is dangerous and stupid, and I set off in pursuit. I have done this enough times myself, but only when mentally alert. It is rather exhilarating with the wind, and you fool yourself that you can always let go and fall back, but the danger is with the truck slowing down than speeding up. At high speeds you also develop instability, and anyway you have only one hand on the handlebar (and brakes), so the odds are not in your favour. On top of that, Ritesh is definitely tired and not at his mental peak. But why am I bothered the most, and not one of the other students? Could some of that "who will answer if something happens" have rubbed off on me? After some furious pedalling, I catch up with Ritesh and he agrees it was foolish, but his assertions lack conviction. All this catching up has brought me to the front, and I believe only Paliwal and Manzar are ahead. I pedal with Ritesh for a while but then he drops off to take a break waiting for some of the others. By now the frenzy of speed is on me, so I zip off trying to catch up with the vanguard. In any event, we have to regroup somewhere soon, for we have become more distended than we ever were during the entire journey. Simple are the pleasures of speed. The exhilaration of a speeding bicycle is like that of an open train window - the wind comes in, the ground rushes past up close to you, and there are of course the sounds of speed. How can a car or a closed-up air- conditioned coach compare with this? I remember being disillusioned terribly by the Shinkansen. So here I am pedalling down, overtaking sundry other bicycles, ox carts, and racing from time to time with a tempo or two. Head down, hands straight, legs moving steadily. Alert for potholes. Ankling. Rhythm. So, is rhythm a good thing? That is very deep. Deeper than one can contemplate on a moving bicycle on the Kanpur Lucknow highway, headed for a Lucknow that suddenly seems a lot closer than it was even a little while ago. Is progress a good thing? The road is beginning to carry a more built-up look. We are about 70km down the road, and it seems like we are approaching some reasonable sized city. I have now caught up with Manzar and we stop off at a culvert near a military school with a soldiers' statue in the lawn (terrible workmanship). There are some peanuts in newspaper lifafas and exquisite rock salt, and we relax to the sound of cracking shells. Then we all go in and drink our fill at the lawn watering tap. So this is Lucknow. We are still on the outskirts, and it is a big city, but there is a sense of achievement already. We take instructions for Hazratganj and the Imam-bara. Pranjal lives here, and he feels he can take over a little further down. At the end of the day he would like us to stop by his house perhaps. Will his parents object that we came over by bicycle? Most probably not - and in any case, on the return journey we plan to hitchhike on a truck. We pedal off into the relative peace of the cantt area. A picture session near the Assembly. We cross the movie theaters and the hotels, turn left at Hazratganj, and carry on to the Imam-bara. A stream of cyclists is now with us - it is Saturday and the offices close early perhaps. One man comes up to me from the crowd - it turns out he is a bicycle racer, and has done a good bit of cycling at the state and national levels. He asks me about my gearing, and speedometer. He comes from a poor background, and has only an one-speed Indian standard bike himself. But he can do wonders on that bike, he and his friends, and I do not doubt it one bit. The other day the owner of Midland Cycles in Kanpur was telling me about this man who suddenly showed up at his shop on the eve of the team's departure for some national event. He had just bicycled the 150 km or so from Gonda, and would like to join the team going to Delhi (he did go). In India, the bicycle is serious transportation, almost a status symbol, and much more than recreation. Every now and then I encounter a bicyclist who will see my crouched position and my gears and will chase me with the "Can't-catch-me" attitude, but I usually don't take them up (except occasionally, and that too in a gradual gentlemanly manner). No doubt some of them are very good. Sometimes at night, together we will race the tempos down GT road from the Gurdev Palace movie theater - and many times others have beaten me on normal bikes (including our own Sudipto Mukherjee). A traffic circle comes and my new friend has to leave. He tells me of the bike he totalled once in an accident with a truck, and how he miraculously escaped. I don't know his name - but it was interesting talking about the Indian bicycling scene. One of the paradoxes of the sport in India is that bicyclists from the Andamans and from Manipur tend to dominate. They have a velodrome in Delhi now (bang under the smokestacks of the Indraprastha power station), and all the contestants ride imported geared cycles. Although several Indian companies make geared racing bikes now, the gearing is imported, and the rest of the components are not really up to international racing standards. Anyhow, here we are now, at the gate to the Imam-bara. We park our bicycles with a wave of relief. Pranjal takes our leave here - he will go on home, and rendezvous with us at the stalls near the Clarks Awadh hotel. A few relaxing hours later, we emerge from the hazards of the three dimensional maze in the bhulbhulayah and Pranjal shows up as we are having nondescript biryani at one of the roadside stalls. We proceed to his house. No one is tired now - we ride down the streets in formation, still riding the emotional high. We ride past the emptied out shell of the secretariat and other official looking buildings. We ride through some marketplace where the thelas of the day have scattered their refuse. We ride with our lengthening shadows on the walls of multistory apartment complexes. Returning to India forces you to ask the question: how good a thing is "progress"? Here we are - a group of unprotected bicyclists, and if a swerving truck were to hit any of us now, that would be it. Finish. But would we have lived a life more vivid, more colourful? Joie de vivre and all that? Is this better than riding along secluded bicycle tracks, away from the hustle and bustle, away from the risks of life? I guess I must be some sort of a weird risk-lover, or else I would not even be thinking along such lines. Riding in formation now, the thirteen of us, through the Lucknow twilight. We pass a cannon to the left - we are in the cantonment. Some formalities with the sentry at the gate to Pranjals' house complex. We all queue up to wash, and then a really big tea. Pranjal's elder brother was also at IIT (on the cricket team) - some pictures on the wall; and then all too soon it is time to leave - his military father shakes my hand and congratulates me for taking the students out. It is past sunset now, and we are again going through the cantt, on towards GT road, to the chungi where we will look for a truck to take us back. Now in the Lucknow dusk, cycling through the darkening streets, cycling behind the tail-lights of the trucks half visible in the crimson sky. Pedal up, pedal down. Rhythm. What makes us feel so good today? Is it Lucknow that we had set out for, or was all this a search for the rhythm that has gone out in our lives? Why are we on this emotional high? Is there something about achieving rhythm that is all the more satisfying because it is so rare? The answer is blown off in the rush of night air as we zip on down the road. Amitabha Mukerjee April 7 1994 The trip took place in February 1993. People who went: Arindam Bhattacharya, G. Ravindra, Dipankar Basu, Naresh Kumar, Manzar Hussain, Kanishk Mahajan, Sumit Sanyal, V. Mahesh, Pranjal Pathak, Rohit Paliwal, Ritesh Gupta, Mani. Sudipto Haldar had to drop out en route due to bicycle problems.