Cycling In Delhi

The Industrialisation of Traffic: Why Bicycles are Faster than Cars – Ivan Illich The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly instalments  He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it.

I travel to come down off the feather-bed of civilization – RL Stevenson I do not remember when the thought of an inter-city bicycle ride first occurred to me. A friend came to drop me at the Tribune Circle in Chandigarh. We bade each other goodbye and from then on, I was on my own. I felt energetic and looked forward to the journey. Finally the day had come, I was living my dream. But as soon as I reached the outskirts of the city, doubt started raising its dreadful head.

By Rahul Banerjee, Indore A bald man in his sixties dressed in spotless white and starched khadi and kurta and pyjama riding a bicycle with a ramrod straight back - that was my first glimpse of Bohreji when I came to stay in the moribund Gramodyog Vidyalaya Ashram in Machla village thirteen kilometers from Indore in 1994. I had just come out of the deep jungles of Jhabua advised by my doctor to take time off from grassroots activism to get rid of the malarial parasites that had made my body their home.

Pooja Hiranandani, Bagalore, India Swapthgami Magazine [PDF] A stimulating piece of writing and one of the first pieces that inspired me to start this blog. I like the gentle purring of the wheels of my cycle as they turn on a quiet dusty road.