The boy, the bike and the blunders I

The rainclouds seem to reappear from nowhere as if to mere tantalize him, just like his mom, every time he thought of stepping out. Reluctant to get drenched in the winter rain he would give up only to realize that the sun is yet again out. This continued for a good three hours. On top of this, his mom’s repeated reminders about him being lazy and worthless irritated him. Adit thought he rather be cold than pestered at home.

The amusing thing about his mother’s taunts and arguments was, that they would always end up with mentions of his poor academic performance, an absolute unnecessary number of friends and a forecasting of him not getting married to an educated girl. The starting points of all these arguments would however vary from subject as general as cooking and astrology or as vague as aliens.

Throwing a disgusted look at the kinetic he took it out of the house. He had asked for a bike in class eleventh if he gets an eighty percent in exams. Luck be blessed, he exactly scored that much. But somehow his dad convinced him to buy a gear-less two wheeler that could also be driven by his mom. That moment be damned. Till today, there are ownership quarrels in the Kumar house between him and his mom. It always a “die or die” moment for Mr. Kumar to decide whether the kinetic be sent to the vegetable market or to the evening tuitions, but of course we know who the clear winner every time would be.

Although it was just eight months old, the kinetic behaved like living the seventieth year of its humanly existence. The battery gave up, the suspension (I wonder if it is sill there at all) the paint and the pick up- everything was in disarray. Whether this was an effect similar to a mishandled child of a messy divorce or Adit’s conscious efforts of breaking it by not missing even a single pothole in the road or making three people other than him sit on the kinetic and then racing it half way till Mussorrie, it was difficult to say. But what could a seventeen year old do about the situation. He would rather vent out his fury on the poor vehicle than to try making his parents understand how important a two-wheeler is, to be ‘in’ and ‘accepted.’ Hardly were the Kumar’s even aware of the cycles going out of fashion for the teenage crowd. Moreover just imagine the embarrassment of the young lad asking a girl out for a date after the tuitions (or even during them) without a bike. Is she expected to sit on the cycle carrier at the back or the horizontal member in the front? Moreover with the hilly ups and downs of the city roads, cycles just ‘don’t work.’ Adit just wished for his parents to see such a simple logic without him actually having to explain it to them, because frankly they might have a problem with the “girl” and the “date” bit. 

The parents thought that providing Adit with the kinetic was a gesture of scaling efficiency and love. But only the poor boy knew how he felt when this stud group of boys in his school and tuition, each with their own shiny roaring bike, would question his male sitting on the maroon gearless vehicle.

“The sooner this breaks, the faster a new one shall come and this time it’ll be the bike, with gears and everything,” was how Adit manipulated the situation. But somewhere at the back of his mind, being the deprived child that he thought he was, he knew it was his only friend in need and hence the damages were restricted till the permitted non-fatal limit. Adit and the kinetic shared a relation, and a very deep understanding  between them. In the wild the animals kill only for food and not pleasure. Such was the case here. Damage the vehicle till the folks get the point, not to the point where there isn’t any vehicle at all, and the days of the bicycle return. Many days, in fact two torturous years raced by with numerous encounters, adventures, misshapenness and misdoings- the duo witness to all.