Bicycle
March 12, 2009
I was talking to my best friend recently about what we had in our families when we were young. In Sri Lanka, having your own car is still considered a luxury. Twenty years ago, it was even more a luxury. I was talking to my best friend Eymard recently. WhenI visit Sri Lanka, Eymard often picks me up from the airport as well as take me to the airport when leaving. He comes in those odd hours to pick me up or to drop me. He has his car. My sister has her car as well. Almost all my friends have cars. Our relatives have their own family cars. But those days when we were growing up, we had no car. Only thing we had in our household was a push bicycle. It was my father’s Raleigh bicycle I remember firs. It was a valuable piece of property we had. Its body was reputably strong. Its paint was pealing off. But whenever he had some money, my father used to take this bicycle to the bicycle repair shop in Balagala area to replace its parts. I enjoyed this part the most. I was an admirer of this skilled young man who was just wearing a short pant with grimy finger doing magic with his hands. His hair was frizzy. He was dark. But his face showed that he was a master at what he was doing. He was also the person who was servicing racing bicycles of Boniface Perera, the national cycling champion those days. He was working at that time at the Ceylon Tobacco Company, where my father has just started working as a security officer. Bonnie, as the villagers called him had the biggest and fittest thighs I have ever seen. He had a kind face with big eyes and had notable side burns. At the bicycle repair shop I was watching how the repair man, I think his name was Basil, who was replacing whole set of spokes, replacing free wheels, replacing ball bearings and how after putting dark green grey color greese was place around the area where the ball bearing to be placed and then sticking ball bearings one by one, one after the other. After that he would insert the axel gently into the middle of the wheel and tighten bolts before fixing it to the bicycle frame. Those days I was perhaps 11 years old and could stay at he workshop hours watching this magic. When the bicycle get new parts it was a whole different feeling. You could feel how smooth the bicycle is on the road and especially when there is a new free wheel you enjoy listening to the sound of the free wheel when you back paddle or stop paddling when the bicycle is on the move. This was the bicycle my father used to ride for years. I still remember he was riding this bicycle from Panagoda Army Camp to Hendala. I think the distance was about 40+ kilometers. But he rode it like nothing. He had clips to clip his trouser when he rode. I remember those red color plastic clips. I even remember he brought home a shot gun carefully wrapped by a cloth and then a jute bag. This gun was then tied to the horizontal part of the frame of the bicycle allowing the gun to hang from the frame. No one would notice that it was a gun that is tied to the bicycle frame due to the way it was wrapped. He then showed us the gun. The gun was at our home for a few months. Before retiring, he took it back to the camp and left it there. Later he regretted that he did not keep the gun when the government began to issue licenses to unlicensed guns. But I also told him that it was good that he did not have the gun because during later 1980s JVP used to obtain information on who had registered guns and came looking for them to be used for their activities.
This Raleigh bicycle is also the bicycle we used to learn how to cycle. I still remember the day I learned how to balance the bicycle, I felt like I learned how to fly. I rode the bicycle around our house non stop for hours. Same for my younger sister. I still remember a photograph of my sister riding this bicycle, left leg on the left paddle, right leg awkwardly placed on the other paddle but through the tiangular frame of the bicycle as our legs were not long enough to ride over the the horizontal bar of the frame. So when we were riding like that, it looked awfully ugly. But we did not care as we felt like we have been given wings and we did not care how our flying looked like, we just wanted to fly!
After a while, through the Ceylon Tobacco Company, my father managed to get a brand new bicycle. The old one was sold for a paultry some. The new one was given and the price of it was deducted from the salary within a period of one year or so. The day this bicycle was brought home, it was like we had our new car. The effect was the same. It’s paint was new and glossy. All steel parts were bright and shining. It had all necessary accessories, including a dynamo, light, rear rack to place any thing to carry on it. It was PHOENIX brand, which I later learned was from China. I have seen this brand of bicycles in China. When I saw then during a recent trip I felt nostalgic.
During first few months we used to keep this bicycle like the most precious thing of our lives. In deed it was the most precious and interesting thing we had at that time. We cleaned and wiped off dust off the bicycle almost every day to keep its new look. But this practice receded after a few months.
My father used to ride this bicycle to go to work. His work places were around the area of Kotahena so the distance was not that much, say around 9 kilometers. But he rode this bicycle in odd hours. He was on shift duty so he sometime left at 10pm to begin his 11pm shift. Or, he would return at 12midnight after his 11pm shift. Or he would leave at 6am to begin his 7am shift.
Unlike sitting on the rear rack of the bicycle, second person would travel sitting on the horizontal bar of the bicycle. This has been peculiar style practiced in Sri Lanka.