A stationary cycle remains stationary

I recently bought a cycle.

Of late, I have been finding it more and more difficult to squeeze my frame into the gap between the steering wheel and the driver’s seat of my car. One can will one’s tummy into retracting only so much.

“I know what I need,’’ I thought to myself. “A cycle”.

I used to cycle regularly as a child. And I never had a fat tummy as a child. Ergo lorem, ipsum (that’s Latin for therefore cycle, pronto. I think.)

A close friend had upgraded to a scooter and wanted to get her cycle out of the way. She had bought the cycle to lead a healthier lifestyle. Only to soon realise that the benefits of an hour of cycling to and fro from work are easily washed away by a can of soda downed in stress at work.

A fact Coke conveniently overlooks in its advertising.

She used to park the cycle in her hallway and hang her scooter keys on a hook right above it. Each time she reached for the scooter keys, the forlorn cycle, robbed of its purpose in life, would tug at her heart strings. Eventually she decided she could bear it no more. The cycle had to go.

Either that or she needed the cash for petrol.

Supply met demand, and supply agreed to sell the cycle for cash.

Part 1: The delicate dance of negotiation

The friend, I and the missus met over drinks and fixed the deal. Well, they fixed the deal while I drank. It took longer than expected, with both of them approaching the matter of fixing a price with as much alacrity as the Indian National Congress party deciding on a new leader.

After my fourth drink, I put an end to the delicate dance of negotiation.

“8000 Rupees”, I burped, “and that is my final offer.” The figure astonished the missus and delighted the friend.

And so, it was. I had become the proud owner of a cycle. It would do for me what it couldn’t do for its previous owner.

Part 2: Lance Armstrong without the EPO

But before it could do that, it was necessary to transport the damn thing home. In my state of euphoric confidence, I fancied myself to be a bit of a Lance Armstrong. Without the EPO. “I’ll ride it home,” I stated. “You’ll do nothing of the sort” the missus hissed, still miffed a bit about the price. “You think I can’t? I’ll show you” I retorted.

And so it was decided that we would carry the cycle home in our car.

However the cycle seemed to believe it was made for being ridden, and did not take kindly to being forced into a car. It stubbornly refused to decrease in size, and my Hyundai i20 steadfastly refused to increase in size. My MBA professor might have called it a resource constraint problem.

“Bend the handle backwards,” the friend suggested.

“Loop the tyre inwards,” the missus chimed in.

“Why isn’t the boot lid opening?” I whined.

The missus helpfully reminded me that I was trying to open the boot of someone else’s car.

We started over again at the right car. I held the boot door open while the missus and the friend tried to bend the handle backwards and loop the tyre inwards, beads of perspiration the only reward of a valiant but losing struggle. That is, until the missus figured out that the boot door was held up pneumatically and didn’t really require any effort from me. That called for a minor adjustment in resource allocation.

I was soon trying to bend the handle backwards, loop the tyre inwards and hold my drink downwards while the missus and the friend watched on, emitting intermittent notes of encouragement.

After about a quarter of an hour of this exercise, I started losing feeling in my legs and arms and began sinking down to the ground gradually. A passer-by, who had been observing the proceedings for a while, walked up to us. He remarked that if we laid down the back seats and tried to get the cycle in at an angle, it might work. Inspired by the idea, the missus and the friend tried their luck again with the cycle, while I watched them with studied interest from the ground.

And it worked.

Under my expert, if somewhat supine guidance, the task was accomplished. The friend remembered that she had a helmet as well. She fetched it from her bag and laid it gently on my chest. “This would have come in handy when I was falling to the ground,’’ I thought, and then suddenly there were no more thoughts.

Part 3: The Stationary Cycle

I woke up later in the car to the sight of the missus driving us home. After we parked in the garage, there was a stop motion reversal of the earlier scenes, with the missus struggling to take out the cycle while I watched on with studied interest from the seat she had strapped me in to prevent me from falling over.

We parked the cycle in the garage that night.

And there it has remained ever since, untouched. I now have to first squeeze between the cycle and the car door before squeezing between the driving wheel and driver’s seat.

Somewhere in a boardroom, a Coke executive must be choking with laughter over his glass of water.