The Bicycle

How our son ‘Bhole’ got this rustic name in the modern world of western names; Jake (jayakumar), Sanj (Sanjay Kumar), Suni (Sunaina) … all sorts of westernized small names you could think of…tom, dick, sam, samu, sumi, suni, sonu, sony, rimo, romi, jerry, jack.. any name remotely sounding like a western word….sounds music to us Indians….surprising, yet true. But my son is ‘Bhole’, my lovely Bhole……the sweetest word of my dictionary… Bhole was born almost 11 years after our marriage.

The night just before his birth, his mother and I both had dreamt of Lord Shiva (Bhole) in a steal-nap at the maternity ward !! he was born at 6:02 AM that chilly morning……there was no escape from this word, any other name wouldn’t have been appropriate for him….…. would it be ?

his mother felt proud of him as though he was going to become a prime minister…but I never felt proud of him……right from his birth I always felt happy….whenever he was around…whenever I heard his voice, whenever I thought of him…it brought smiles to my face instantly, no matter how angry I was. Everyone, including his mother blamed me for his poor performance in school...and that I had spoilt him....I just smiled away all accusations as they were true, to the core...yes I had spoilt him...and I would love to do it again and again, as I shouldn’t be doing anything else.... should I be ??? ...........


He was never good in games and sports, in fact very weak, he loved to watch others play and always tried hard to help them continue their game...so that he could watch them play....that was what he could do at best...
always fantasized that he would one day play as well as his friends…and even beat them hollow ...he would fantasize that he would hit six after six ....against their best bowler...alas !..the day never came..I pitied him so much at my own peril...

he was always the ‘ball boy’ for his friends...

I would often watch him imitate great players, their sporty gestures and postures when alone..he would swing the imaginary bat a thousand times, and call himself by the name of a great batsman..then at times he would be kicking an imaginary ball to score numerous goals and call himself by the name of some great footballer…....I always loved to see his acts...I loved him more than my own life...

Soon, his incompetence in sports and games became very obvious to all his friends...they started humiliating him but this was only natural, none could help him in anyway. I often wanted to teach him some tricks but he never learnt, I sometimes went out to the ground with him, passing a ball or pursuing much younger kids to play with us, but he never really picked up..., he became the permanent ball boy for the entire ground...
but one thing, he was good at any game which did not involve others, in which he would have to play alone...he could run very fast...or jump pretty long or high only if he was alone...

he never complained that he was always made to fetch the run-away balls, or that he was never allowed to touch his own football and that only others played with his toys, footballs...and that he was a joke in the group.. no, he never complained to anyone, none ever knew his secrets except me...
he would confide everything about his small life in me...only in me... during the father-son tate..a..tate..lying together on our bed every night before sleep...night after night....
this forced his mother to sleep in a separate room and as husband-wife we often missed the most pleasurable 'event' of the adult world. On many nights, whenever I tried tip-toeing out of my bed, he would catch me red-handed and tell me he was awake...I always pretended to have slept off quite early to force him to sleep, early too, with a great guilt feeling in me though, but he always had tons of story to tell, he knew I would go to his mother, but he didn’t know why, neither he cared to know why...he always demanded my full attention and it was clear that he wasn’t ready to share my attention with any one else in the world...not even with his own mother.

I never regretted missing those adult events...as long as Bhole was near me, as long as I saw his tiny frail statured body lay beside mine, as long as his small hands rested on my large chest...as long as I could hear his breaths...as long as his small head was so close that I could kiss it a hundred times...it was a feeling, only and only a father like me could ever get...I could sacrifice every earthly object of pleasure, any material happiness the world could ever provide me with...just to be his father...

When he was a boy 2-3 years old, he used to love toys, all sorts. Once a small plastic bottle became his favourite toy...he was so playful with it, we started calling him ‘batliwalla’...alas ! only if he had sufficient strength..he was too weak for group games and never participated in any...
As my wife became lesser and lesser interested in the adult events...I started feeling she was good only for households and not those things...which every man lives for...or may be ...dies for..

Like every office, mine too had numerous good looking women, working in different departments in different capacities. Like every manager and down below, has his own secret target woman in his office, I too had one...but in my case, the attraction was from both sides...or so I thought, she was a Marathi, having the asset I admired most, a good figure...she drew me like a powerful magnet and I was dying to get her...perhaps her body...
Like most Marathi women, I should say most working women, she too was ambitious and as she could not herself, she wanted to become the General Manager through me and thus be able to call the shots albiet through proxy, I was close to getting that post in the company.

We never really interacted on many occasions, nor that I took her out anywhere, except occasional lifts, whose frequency increased rapidly as the date of my acquiring GM’s post drew nearer. She was a divorcee in her early 30s and I, married and a father of one in my late forties. My wife in her early forties, was left with very little interest in adult events. If at all, only on some nights I could escape the most powerful clutches of the two tiny hands of my sleeping soul.. untying them, was an emotional challenge I could rarely live up to........

I liked my office dame for one more reason, I realized... and that is, my son liked her too...she was always a gate-crasher in his birthday parties...she did not have an issue herself before divorce..and loved my son...on his birthday parties, she came in, cuddled Bhole, presented him with an expensive gift and left early...
my wife was so so with her, she could see there was a relationship growing between us, but such things were so common in Mumbai-office-life that she thought she had better things to do...than policing around...

I could see, Bhole was growing in a world of unhappiness, a world of friends who only found faults in him, his inability to play well, or kick the football; a challenge he could never answer well enough to be satisfied himself ....time was running fast and now he was fast completing his 7th year and geting into the 8th..

Only a particular bicycle, no one else owned in our place, interested him to no ends. Even the bully boy...Ankit... tried but couldn’t get this bike from his father...it’s the best and the latest bike in the market...’Hero-Acrobat’...a small two-wheeled tiny bicycle, but God !....what acrobatics you could do on it.!!, priced at Rs 15,000 !. A bit too much for my son at 7, or for that matter any household in Mumbai...

He saw this cycle in a cycle showroom at Kalbadevi, where our family had visited a friend recently...the cycle shop fell on our way, due to a taxi strike and my own car in the repair garage...we had to wait for the bus, for long enough we could as well walk back to chembur...
while standing at the bus stop he studied the cycle in the minutest details known, perhaps, only to the manufacturer..he fell in love with it !!..

He exclaimed, Steeeel body, adjustable seat, mountain climber, small thick tyres.... its paddles worked as its brakes, no free wheel...you could ride the cycle back-wards !!.. and it had many other features, of the 7-year old’s imagination...you could do such acrobatics on the cycle!! With the cycle he could leave the spectator spellbound...he exclaimed...I understood every bit ...as I myself had a foreign version in my childhood...

He would talk and talk about this cycle...as we together boarded his flight of imagination..every night..night after night...
While hearing him, I deliberately made mistakes about the brakes, tyres, body etc. so as to hear his excited voice again and again...and ofcourse a slap on my face for every mistake I made....yes, I admit, he used to slap me right and left...for the slightest inattentiveness or mistake in part-re-narrations...or a name mistake for that matter....but so soft were his palms, I always wanted like getting another one...
I knew all his friends and foes, their names, their looks, their attitudes, their parents ....everything he knew of..I too did...
on yet another night we two would visit the world competition for acrobatic-cycling, he fantasized he would take part in it some day...he saw it in ESPN...our nights were full of joy and fantasies...but for him every word was real, true, as he believed he could do it with this cycle...to alleviate his position among his superior friends, he believed that he would learn cycling in a day, he wouldn’t take long to learn all the feats of a cycle acrobatic champion, as he always referred himself to...and why not him, if his father could in his youth...

He fantasized that he would paddle the paddles so hard that none of his competitors could ever get close to him, he would beat the best racer in the area, he would take double the number of rounds than his friends, he would then stop the cycle mid-way....and do some magic...acrobatics he meant.., the neighbours and his jealous pals would watch his feats with awe and disbelief... then he would run the cycle on one wheel, lifting the front wheel up ! to mesmerize his spectators, he expected so many of them.....
to every one...who disbelieved him, to everyone who humiliated him, who never took him in games...those who took away his football from him, who kicked him for not defending the goal...he would now show the world what he was capable of...he would stun the cruel world now...with this cycle....his friends would start to show respect for what he could do....

We would talk and talk as he would board me in our flight of imagination...every night..his 8th birthday was closing in......and the least he expected from me was that cycle...which he truly believed would change his world forever...


But his birthday came in and went out ....so soon and so fast that I never realized when it was or what happened then, I did not even remember that I had to buy that cycle for him..in fact you couldn’t buy everything a child fantasized with...could you ? and that too with such amounts...


I had to go away on a business tour, to Delhi for seven days...just before his 8th birthday... and reached Mumbai, just on that day..he was expecting me to come in with the cycle...I never realized.

I was so busy to impress the management in order to get that all hankered post of GM, for which there were atleast 5 equally competitive candidates... and GM also meant eventually my dame too...I revered this post, having only an engineering bachelor’s degree with no MBA, I was the least educated...there was this Punjabi guy, an IIT-IIM brand, who always eyed every thing I had wanted. Every foreign tour I wanted, he would get it before me, every time I expected an increment he would take it away, and this GM’s post – he craved for it, much more than me...as, he knew he could then hook-in many of the office beauties including mine...somehow I always felt he was my death knell...


As my toturous preparation for getting the GM's post went on, I continued to be very busy...very busy, both in office and at home......
I never saw such sadness in my son..I could faintly notice he was almost broken down...I could now hardly give him time or listen to him about his daily life, I started returning very late from office and was always so tired that slept off even before he could start to speak...
he started to lose all interest in life as such, hardly had anything interest him now...and I was equally helpless.........weeks passed by and so did months...I became a machine...competition and jealousy gripped me like never before, I said to myself.... "see if not now, then never, you must teach a lesson to this Punjabi fellow...who has been eyeing your woman of late, rather too much.." I started to fume inside and started to work much harder...much, much more heat I had generated than my little son could absorb...the only flower of my life was slowing drying in this heat...

Bhole almost went into oblivion even in front of me and on many days, I sent him to his mother’s bed at night to get a sound sleep for myself...I didn’t know what happened to me, as though a devil possessed me and told me to ‘rise’ in life...to go-get things I always wanted, leave nothing for the rivals..nip them in the buds...
at the fall of a hat of the MD I would reach his house...talk to his wife as though she was a queen...I entirely forgot my family ...and everything around me, all I knew was that I had to become the GM !

As per company policy, every GM selection had to be through a presentation of a new business idea, your own, followed by an interview....

I prepared really hard ..really hard...and was through with almost everything. One thing I knew was that none could ever beat me in, it was my presentation...that’s my forte...just prior to the presentation week, it almost became clear to all in the company, that the top management wanted me and only me there... my dame even congratulated me in advance, asking for a party...I smiled in happiness, perhaps not for getting the GM’s post but with the prospect of going out with her...
as per rules I would have to appear for the presentation and the mandatory interview on a fixed date.


The final day finally came up, I was prepared to the hilt..my presentation and interview would be next morning...a Saturday...
On Friday, after a satisfactory mockup presentation at office conference room, relaxed, I came back home a little early ... took my, now forgotten child, into my lap after so long...watched a film till late into the night along with him and we both went to bed together after a long long time, since my preparation fot GM’s post started a few months ago
....he had lots and lots to tell, lots of grudges, against ...against whom ? me ! yes now he could speak and scold me as much as he wanted, he could slap me as many times he wanted to, for not taking care of him...for not noticing him...for neglecting him and all the complaints he accumulated for so many months ...through humiliation from his friends and from me too !!...

he said he was no more my son, and that he would never talk to me...he did ‘cutty-cutty’ with me many times that night...he never spoke about the cycle he had loved so much...he never wanted to impress his superior friends any more, I saw he was dejected from life..he never wanted to show acrobatics on the cycle...he had only complaints ...against me..that I had ignored him...on this day I didn’t even look at him, on that day I ran out of the house...I never talked to him, that I regularly wasted lots food, that I never slept with him any more...that his mother loved him more than I did...that I’d become a mechanical man like a robot his mother had told him...he continued to complain and complain to me against me ! he shockingly remembered even the smallest of my activities and when and where what I did or on how many occasions I was rude to him, each and every word that I hurt him with..he remembered so vividly; he continued and continued....he didn’t want to take revenge on those who humiliated him from his boyhood, he now no more wanted that cycle from me, as he said it was too expensive, and that he didn’t deserve it as he thought he could not learn cycle-acrobatics, which he now found so difficult, he was utterly dejected from his life .....
I started to realize how much he loved me and that he was absolutely dependent on me alone......as my many-month-old tiredness overtook my attention and I could no longer continue to listen to his complaints...but he continued...and continued ..while I kept sleeping on...his soft grudges kept forcing themselves into my sleeping ears...for long, very long ..... I didn’t know how long.............................................



Next morning I woke up rather early only to receive a call from my office administration, informing me that the Presentation-Interview date had been shifted to the 22nd of the next month.......I felt so disheartened and disappointed ..this GM’s post and my dame were almost mine for the asking, safe in my kitty....and now it looked so far away....

Feeling dejected we decided to visit Alibaug and relax the next day, a Sunday. Alibaug is 140 km from Mumbai...a decent and safe water to take your kids to, we started in my age old vehicle early morning Sunday, on Mumbai – Pune highway...and at a high speed perhaps punishing the poor car for my own dejection....

First, it was the express way...I could’nt resist the temptation of driving at 120 kmph, as the road was smooth and wide...we moved on, my speeding tendency remained unchanged and out of Panvel, into the high way, I continued to speed up, my son, Bhole was at my side, and when this father-son duo were at and near the steering, none ever dared overtake our car....he was ever thrilled and kept asking me to overtake every vehicle he could spot far away...he got his father’s undivided attention once again and he wanted to utilize every bit of it... every vehicle he asked me to overtake I did and satisfied him to no ends...inside me I felt so good that I could neutralize some of my misdeeds against my little soul.., I speeded and speeded and ..and ..and..started to think about my dame..and that if I did not become GM ,now the interview is on a shifted date, the management might change priorities...why did they change the date ? did they have any other person on their minds? if I wasn't going to be the next GM then my dame would humiliate me even, all sorts of nasty queries filled my already dejected mind...now, how would I get her ?

I was surprised as to how a human mind really worked, it did not assess the gravity of the situation you were in...for example, you could suddenly start to think of sex or even someone’s death...while praying in a temple...yea, believe me...this could happen to anyone...no sins...not at all...and it happened to me.......I started to think about my GM's post, how to get my dame...and all that, while driving at 110 kmph!! with a little delicate flower beside me...
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SUDDENLY…. SUDDENLY ……A HUGE THUNDERBOLT LIKE SOUND, AS MY CAR CRASHED INTO A TRUCK COMING FROM NOWHERE, PERHAPS FROM THE OPPOSITE SIDE...WHAT A DEAFENNING SOUND IT WAS....THAT’S ALL I REMEMBERED...
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I didn't know how many days had passed by...to regain consciousness in a hospital bed,...but when I did... the first and only thing that griped my mind and froze me with fear instantly, was Bhole alive ? was Bhole alive ? how was he ? it ran my mind a million times a second...I went mad with anxiety...my head burst into pieces,...at first I could not talk or even gesture...but only try to say something with my eyes....whom to ask ? ..all seemed to know my mind..they did not want to make eye contacts with me..they all knew the only and most important question my mind could have at that moment was, was Bhole alive? ..they were avoiding me..my eyes...my consciousness....they pretended as though they were all very busy...but no, none was; ...no nurse, no doc, no relative was busy in that room....they were frightened that I would die of shock..get a heart attack on hearing the news...I never wanted to know about my wife...whether she was dead or alive, did not matter to me at that moment...but my soul..my only child Bhole..how was he ? that’s all I wanted to know..he..he was everything..everything..to me..much, much more than my own life...

.....soon their eyes betrayed, the nurses, docs and my relatives; as I gestured and asked about Bhole, they all started weeping together...

I realized in a shock, that my tiny soul had left me for ever, gone to the heavens to get the bicycle I had promised him, to complain to God against me..., to find a God who would listen to his stories however simple or worthless those might sound ...,all my small statured, incompetent, poor boy wanted was a listener-father, unlike me..a father who would not forget to buy him the bi-cycle of his life, on his birthday...the bicycle which could lift his downtrodden image to his superior friends,..... he needed a father who would not neglect him for his promotion and a dame...a father worthy of his tiny soul...worthy of his sweet unadulterated love...which he now hoped to get in the heavens perhaps......

he had always been sad, very sad ....during the months of my hard preparation, he was very unhappy ...deep in his tiny heart he was very disappointed with me...with my neglect of him...with my running after that post of GM, he wanted to tell me a lot of things I did not have time to listen to...that night he had so many complaints against me..! I was too tired to listen to and slept off..rather too early.. if only I had had time to hear his stories...my heart would not burst in pain now, had I bought him the bicycle, he wouldn't go to the heavens to ask for it ...perhaps God would not have taken my sweet child away from his reckless and careless father....who was thinking about his office, promotion and how to get his dame..all.. during a 110 kmph drive...with an innocent delicate flower sitting beside...

Now my head started to swim...my heart really started to waver...and pound so hard as though it would burst out all the blood in it...my whole body shaking vigorously...I tried to stand up...the docs. and nurses couldn't hold me down...I started to scream ...scream it was, at the top..ohh...I couldn't explain...what loud sounds I generated that moment...’Bhole’...’Bhole’...the nurses, docs and relatives still trying to pin me back to the bed..my heart was at 200 ppm...I didn’t know...I cried out my heart in that hospital room..filling the otherwise quiet environ with spine shivering cries ..cries of a helpless father who just lost his soul, the sweetest child on earth, for his own misdeeds..cries..the bitterly painful cries, I rendered, I warn even God not to hear it...I continued the chilling cries ..non-stop...as if I were trying to reach my sweet boy and bring him back from the heavens...I promised him I a thousand such bicycles..only ..only if he was there to listen..my cries continued unabated...with thousands of promises I would do for him..but alas....!


I started to feel the cold of all the liquid pouring out from the saline bottles I had just broken during my struggle,..onto me ....as the struggle continued between the nurses-docs and me on my hospital bed...
I started to feel quite cold and started to hear a very faint familiar female voice ... some more saline bottles broke and some more water onto my body...the cold liquid kept gushing at me at an ever increaseing rate...by now I was totally drenched, feeling really cold...the nurses started to shake me violently ...........


My wife shook me awake...I WOKE UP drenched in water....in my own home and in my very old bed on that very Saturday morning I had prepared myself so well for the presentation and GM’s interview, my wife yelling down at me...as I just came back from the deepest and ‘best’ nightmare of my life...my wife had poured an entire bucket of cold water onto me...as I screamed for Bhole...Bhole...in my dream-hospital-bed...
As soon as I woke up and came back from the dream life to real life.....first thing I did was to jump out of the bed and rush to find if Bhole was really alive !....yes he was ....he was downstairs in the ground ..watching all the cyclists pass by...and may be may be still fantasizing.....
I rushed to get my wallet first, my mobile next...in the payajamas I ran downstairs and into the ground, caught Bhole by the hand...rushed to my car...to the utmost exasperation of my wife, I told her nothing... I put Bhole in the back seat.....and left for Kalbadevi...only at 40 kmph...
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I missed my Presentation..I missed the interview of my lifetime...I missed my assured GM's post...and above all I lost my lovely dame !!...all of which were so eagerly taken away by my Punjabi friend..yes friend..I no more am jealous of him...he no more rang my death knell...I attained ‘Nirvana’ while alive..I understood the true meaning of life..one would take a lifetime visiting all temples of the world yet one couldn’t learn what God taught me last night..albeit through a nightmare.....


my phones rang non-stop that whole Saturday....but I ...I was least bothered to take their calls or to get that GM’s post now...

while the phones rang on non-stop .. in our ground downstairs, I taught my sweet son how to balance a bicycle. Him sitting on the new cycle of his choice, he looked so satisfying, so serene..so divine..his small face was lit with joy ..as he started to be able to balance.. for the first time in his small lifetime, it was afternoon..we cycled the whole day that Saturday..and why not ?
I taught him when and how to use the paddle as the brakes..how to balance...and believe me he learnt to balance his own new bicycle, he truly loved to own, in one straight day....to a satisfaction I never saw on his face ever....

You would say, that was the worst day of my life..but actually it was, it was the best day of my life..the day I deliberately absented myself from the most important presentation and interview, the day I deliberately rejected the post of GM I always hankered for..the day I bought the best present for my child..is the best day of my life..

As expected my dame did not turn up to find out what had happened to me..whether I was dead or alive ..or why I did not take any of their calls, or why I did not turn up for the interview of my lifetime...she was interested not in me...but in a ‘GM’, and there was one by that Saturday afternoon...again it was the Punjabi...both got their bodily matches... and I got my sweetest child back...God thank you so much, to have taught me the true value of my life, ................enjoy my friends, Punjabis..... Marathis.....Bengalis......and the rest of India...enjoy lives in your own ways,....but for now, let me kiss my lovely child.. once more.. he has just slept off on my lap at the dinner table...too happily tired ..


As you might have expected the entire dream was an ‘inception’ in its best form of sophistication; not at level-3 by my Punjabi rival, but at level-1 by Lord Bhole….
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