Type-II: Memories Of My First House (8 page)

The ability to
cycle was like a ticket. Every evening I cycled with the older
children. But unlike in a game of cricket or football, I was not at
their mercy. Nobody could tell me to cycle in the farthest corner
of a ground or on a side road, whereas in a game I was usually made
to field on the boundary. I may not have been able to keep up with
them but I cycled on my terms. Cycling changed me for the better.
It empowered me, it reduced my dependence on others. And after some
time it opened up the city to me.

I started cycling
to school a year later, when I was in class 4. Until then, papa
used to drop and pick me up. It’s only now that I realize how
committed he was to the family. A slightly built man even when he
was young, he weighed barely 50kg and stood 5’4” in his socks. Yet
he was tireless. Mornings he would get up by 5.30am, weekday or
weekend, summer, rain or winter, and cycle all the way from CSIO
Campus to Hallo Majra Village, at least 4km away, to fetch milk.
After that, he had tea and took me to school on the same black Hero
Jet cycle. My school’s morning time was 7.45am but we never got
late. I used to sit side-saddle on the thick carrier of the bicycle
and he slung the bag over the side thoughtfully, for he did not
want to burden my back. I asked him questions incessantly all the
way. At first, there was a short cut through the office’s rear gate
and we used to reach school quickly. The office grounds were
beautifully tended and the flowerbeds always made colourful waves.
He sometimes stopped to pluck a yellow ‘dog flower’ for me. I found
the snapping jaw of the flower fascinating although it didn’t have
a nice scent to recommend itself. But later, for security reasons,
that gate was shut and we had to take the longer route around the
campus. Every year, I managed to hurt my heel once or twice by
swinging my legs as father cycled. My little heel would hit the
spokes and bleed despite the shoe leather. Then we would return
home, bandage my foot, and get the shoe repaired. The day would
automatically become a holiday, and for the next few days I would
go to school in blue Hawaii slippers. I hated them, because that’s
what poor kids wore to government schools, and though we were only
slightly better off financially, I was determined not to be seen as
one of them. I eventually learned to sit with my legs extended away
from the wheel.

Sometimes, when
their children missed the bus—not our school bus but the office
bus, rather truck... I have to digress now. CSIO had a bus but it
was seldom sent to drop children to school. An orange Tata truck
was the usual mode of conveyance. There was also a very old, grey
Tata-Mercedes truck that was unreliable and broke down on the way.
We called it ‘khatara’, and I liked it because its rear bay was
lower and easier to get in and out of (I was quite clumsy). At
times, we also went by a grey enclosed auto that had a steering
wheel instead of a handlebar. The rarest treat of all was a ride in
the office’s Mercedes Benz car. The office driver, on old man we
called Chhote Lal Uncle, was an angel but he retired when I was a
kid. I stopped going by the bus/truck in upper KG after a scooter
hit me as I was alighting in the afternoon.

I was telling you
that, sometimes, when their children missed the bus, papa’s seniors
would hail him from their balconies and ask him to take their
blue-white Lambrettas for the school run. I found the offer
generous and delighted at the prospect of getting a scooter ride
without realizing then how much it galled him. He was happier
pedalling and sweating than running another man’s errand on a
scooter, especially when that man stood shaving in his balcony,
enjoying his leisure. But he kept his pride in check for our sake.
For me, a scooter ride was a rare treat and I enjoyed it. I would
stand on the footboard, the officer’s son would sit on the seat
behind papa, and off we would go.

Papa used to pick
me from school in the afternoon, for which he had to finish lunch,
rush to the school and drop me home, all in the space of half an
hour. On a cycle. And then, in the evening, after office, he cycled
or walked to the market on household chores. I know he didn’t have
the physical strength to do it, but his reserve of will power was
outstanding. I couldn’t have done it.

***

One winter
afternoon, as I stood in the school porch waiting for papa, he
walked in through the gate smiling. I held his hand—I was in
UKG—and skipped along. Just outside the gate stood a white Vijai DL
(deluxe) scooter that I had never seen before. It certainly did not
belong to any of his seniors whose children were in my school. I
looked inquisitively at papa and heard what I wished to hear. It
was OUR scooter. I was so happy that day, I was on top of the world
and mummy couldn’t make me sit down to do my homework.

The scooter wasn’t
new but it looked good. The paint was clean. Below the rear
numberplate were stuck the letters SC Jain. Father had the same
initials, only he was Sharma, SC Sharma. He never removed the
previous owner’s name although we kept the scooter for more than 10
years, selling it off at the end of 1992. The scooter had been in
an accident and its engine mounting was damaged. Papa knew this
when he paid Rs 4,000 to buy it. But it always remained an
unpredictable steed. We used to park it in our cycle garage on the
ground floor. Unlike the new Bajaj Chetak that replaced it, the
Vijai had separate keys for handle release and ignition (the Bajaj
didn’t have an ignition key, only an engine kill switch), and I
remember one of them was wider and shone yellow where its nickel
plating had come off.

We used the
scooter occasionally because petrol, no matter how cheap in those
days, was still an indulgence for our family. On Sundays, when we
had to go out somewhere, papa would get it running first. I
followed him at his heels because it took me no time at all to get
dressed up. I had only two pairs of shoes—the white fleets were
exclusively for school on Wednesdays and the black leather shoes
were for school on the other five days and everything else.

Papa tried
starting up the scooter with silent apprehension. It was understood
that it could not start on the first two kicks. If it started on
the third, we both smiled silent congratulations at each other.
There was pride mingled with relief in those smiles. But more
often, it didn’t start. Fifth kick, sixth, tenth... Papa would
fiddle with the controls, sniff to see if the mixture was
over-rich, turn off the fuel supply and continue. Usually, by the
time mummy and my sister came down, it was running. And papa nodded
reassuringly at them as he caught his breath after the workout. His
manner was apologetic, as if saying, I know it’s embarrassing but I
didn’t let you down, did I?

But there were
also times when the scooter didn’t start at all. Then the side
panels had to come off and papa had to get his hands dirty. Those
were thick, heavy panels, designed to survive more than a knock. At
the bottom, the steel curved inward to prevent the user from
nicking their fingers on it. Unlike the Bajaj, it also didn’t have
indicators built into the panels, but then indicators hadn’t been
made compulsory in the era when it was made. Our Bajaj Chetak came
to life after a stiff kick with a snappy ‘wheee’. But the old Vijai
would raise hopes with a grrRRRrrrRRrrr, and then die. If you
gunned the motor too early it stopped. If you didn’t rev it up in
time, it stopped. It was a very engaging machine. Yet I loved it. I
was never so proud of my first car as I was of it.

One summer
afternoon it seriously let us down. We had to go somewhere and papa
spent half an hour trying to coax it to life. He was sweating, the
scooter was hot, he got his hands dirty, we all stood waiting under
the afternoon sun, yet it didn’t start. Finally, we parked it in
disgust and took a CTU bus from the stop outside the CBI office in
Sector 30. My chief grouse was that we had to walk the extra
distance to that stop (there was another one at the government
school gate but the bus we needed didn’t have a stop there). But
then, when papa took the scooter out the following Sunday, it
started easily. I am sure a spirit resided in it.

There were good
things too about the Vijai. It was very stable, for one, as its
engine was mounted in the middle, motorcycle-style. We were
returning from Mohali one night and the road was not clearly
visible in its dim, 6-Volt headlight (I don’t know the wattage but
the electricals were 6-Volt). The link road was being widened and
there was a heap of pebbles on the roadside. Papa misjudged the
braking distance and the Vijai went straight into the heap, dug in
and stopped. It didn’t fall and we were unhurt, unscathed, not even
slightly ruffled. I said WE: there were four of us and that was the
scooter’s second virtue. It was long and spacious, and the spare
wheel was mounted horizontally, so it could be used as a third
seat. We had inserted an old, small oil-stained pillow under the
black wheel cover to turn it into a comfortable seat, and for a
long time my sister rode on it. When I grew taller, she had to
surrender that place to me and start sitting between papa and
mummy. More than her height, it was about her age and appearing
decorous, I think.

That scooter was
the first vehicle my sister and I learned to operate. Father gave
us our first lessons on the road behind Sukhna Lake near the golf
course. It used to be a very quiet road then, and remained so for
years after. There were long and wide parking bays at regular
intervals, and we learned to engage first gear in their secluded
safety. Since papa wasn’t tall it was difficult for him to guide us
from the rear seat, and inevitably, we made the scooter rear up the
first few times we engaged gear. But we came out of those attempts
unscathed. Later, I honed my riding skills in a ground near the
Traffic Police Lines in Sector 29.

I was not allowed
to take the scooter outside the campus because I didn’t have a
licence but by the time I was in class 8 I started sneaking it out
for a ride inside the campus. On one occasion, its weak brakes let
me down and I hit a family riding a moped. That day, the Vijai’s
sure-footed nature saved me. It stayed upright without much effort
on my part, but the moped fell and the elderly couple riding it and
their grandchild had bruises. I foolishly blamed them, but the old
man knew papa and told me calmly to leave. I still didn’t see the
gravity of the situation and came home boasting that I had just
been in the first motoring accident of my life. In about an hour,
papa came to know the details of the case from neighbours and went
to see the family and apologize.

Such then was our
first scooter. When papa bought his new Bajaj Chetak in 1992, the
old scooter had to vacate the garage, and I was upset about this.
My loyalty made me regard it as almost a part of the family, and
when after a few months papa decided to sell it, I was all grief.
The buyer came on the weekend. He was from Kerala and took it away
because spares were easy to find in his hometown. I heard the
scooter start but didn’t go downstairs to see it off. It would have
been too painful.

***

I now live in a
place called Indirapuram just outside Delhi. My house is on the
eighth floor. It isn’t sunlit, but there’s no seepage and we get
water round the clock. There’s room enough for my family of three,
but there’s nothing else to recommend living in it. The air is
sooty, there is no space for children to play although cars occupy
a few acres. Strangely, there is a swimming pool that remains
locked eight months in a year. There are no trees either, at least
not what I would call trees. No neem, peepul, mango, guava... Just
a few ornamental, ramrod-straight palms with leaves that a child
may count. There’s a name for this way of life: modernity. It must
be a very good thing for everyone to desire it so fervently. But I
have my doubts and they are growing stronger.

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