The second day she got on a bike with pedals on it, Maya started biking.

Of course, she had experience with pedaling and she had experience with balancing. She pedaled her tricycle for the first time a year or so ago. She’s been balancing on a scooter about the same. We had bought her a balance bike about a year back, but she didn’t really use it much after the first few days.

Learning to bike is a rite of passage, at least from my generation, if not older (especially for boys). I got my first bike on my fifth birthday. My dad hosted a lavish birthday party, inviting everybody in the textile mills. The mill workers all pooled money together and got me a bike. I not only got a bike, I also kissed my girlfriend on that day. What! you say, a girlfriend at 5! Well, she was a girl, she was my friend and we spent a lot of time together. I even ran after her car like little Shashi Kapoor does in Raj Kapoor’s Aag (though it would be many years before I saw the movie and relived my childhood heartbreak).

The bike came with training wheels. It was unusual in those days in the little towns of India to have a bike commensurate with my age and to have training wheels. Most kids learnt to ride on adult bikes, not even sitting on the seat so that they could reach the pedals. They gripped the seat under their right armpit even as they held onto the right handlebar with their right hand, pedaling as they dangled over the left side of the bicycle, their butt over an imaginary seat. Even Shanthala learned to bicycle this way. I’ve not seen anybody ride a bicycle like that in a long, long time. When I searched the web for a photo of this biking style, this is the best I could find (image courtesy of photo.net, I don’t know the author).

I eventually learned to ride a bike without the training wheels. My dad took off the training wheels on one side at first before removing them completely. Many kids in the neighborhood had smirked at the way I had learnt to bicycle. Most had learnt the hard way. Learning it this way also meant that most kids learnt to bicycle at a much earlier age.

But even with training wheels, I vaguely remember my fear when the first training wheel came off (and I fell when I leaned to one side) and when my dad wanted to take the second one off. I begged him to let them be for another week or two.  When I got acquainted with the brilliant Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, in my twenties, the stories around Calvin’s horror of learning to bike seemed real. Here are a couple of those strips (courtesy of lovine.com).

While learning to bike is a rite of passage today with most, if not all, kids today knowing how to bike, this was not true, at least not in India, even as late as in my parents generation. For example, my mom doesn’t know how to bike and neither does my mother-in-law. The issue was cultural and practical. It was a skill that was not of much use to someone who had to stay at home. And wearing a bike with a saree was difficult if not dangerous (you didn’t want the folds of the saree getting entangled in the wheel).

In recent years, I’ve noticed a new way of learning to bike, using something called “balance bikes”. It is a bike with no pedals and kids move the bike by pushing back with their legs, one leg at a time, almost like roller skating. When the bike is in motion, they attempt to put their feet up on a support bar and learn to balance. Here is a picture of Maya on a balanced bike, taken about a year back.

But, she didn’t seem to ride it much, though Shanthala seems to remember differently. She always seemed partial to her scooter, compared to the bike, after the initial rush. Part of the problem was that she wanted to keep going in the direction she was headed and not turn back home with enough energy left to make it back. So, a mile or so away, she’d get off the bike and demand to be carried home. It was quite difficult to lug both her and her bike back, almost a mile. If we refused, she’d start crying or throw a tantrum. When both of us were home, one of us stayed back at home to come get us in the car when Maya was done. So, this practice obsoleted itself quickly.

For the past month or so, on the days she was with the nanny, our day ended with a visit to one of the nearby parks. She tended to take her tricycle to the park, pedaling vigorously to keep up on those tiny wheels. When Maya was born, a friend had lent us their kids’ bike, a strong, sturdy contraption. The bike had gathered dust and rust as it lay in our garage all this time. Shanthala had been reminding me to get the bike fixed. I was reticent, partly because I felt that Maya was not ready since she had hardly practiced on the balance bike. I did not want it to be another toy in her toy bag. We finally got it fixed on Saturday.

Saturday evening, we took the bike to the park for Maya’s evening jaunt. Maya insisted that I hold onto the bike and not let go as she tried to pedal and balance. Memories of the Calvin strip haunted me. On the way back, she seemed a little more comfortable, though still unsteady. Sunday morning, we were both up early. She wanted to get back on the bike. Shanthala and I thought of taking advantage of the early hour to use the street by our house. It is a low traffic street even at the best of times, and on Sunday mornings, there is no vehicular traffic at all. The wider street allowed her to focus on balancing instead of worrying about navigating between the edge and the bushes on a sidewalk. Within a few minutes of her getting on it, she was balancing and pedaling away.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Related posts:

1. Maya Starts PreSchool
2. Biking with Maya
3. Maya Turns Three
4. Shanthala Starts Work
5. iPhone and Maya