In the 19th century roads in London were very bad – full of potholes and mud.  Most of the
traffic was on foot. The wealthy people went by horse driven carts. There is a story of a blind
man walking with his stick. He was often offered a lift by horse cart people. And he always
refused it by saying that he was in a hurry!

I have been a cyclist all my life. When not using cycle I went on foot and sometimes combined
with public transport. I have known to be very punctual. The only time I was late for an
appointment was when I took a lift from a friend in his car!

In 2008 when I began to work on the environment and evils of fossil fuels, I realized that my
not using cycle was ‘politically correct’! In 2016 I initiated Ecologise Hyderabad. I came across as
someone who has been a ‘dedicated’ cyclist all his life, meaning I neither took a driving licence nor
did I ever drive a fossil fuel based vehicle. So in 2017, Ecologise Hyderabad decided to celebrate the
Bicentenary Year of the bicycle. That year they did several events –film shows, cycle rallies,
meetings and workshops, brought out a Facebook Page and published several books. Since then I
have been writing regularly about bicycles in several journals and posting on bicycle Facebook
pages. This picked up more during the Covid Pandemic when the importance of the bicycle was
realised with a big force!

Meanwhile several bicycle movements all over the world began to emphasise bicycle lanes, fancy
cycles and expensive safety measures. I felt that this was anti people for people in India and that
the ‘new’ bicycle movement was serving capitalism. So I actively took part in the debate and
published several essays on it mainly in Countercurrents.

In this book I have put together what I considered important articles and stories from my writings
on the bicycle. There are ten essays and two short stories. The essays are divided in two groups
–Shorter essays and longer ones. The shorter ones mainly promote the bicycle and praise them
whereas the longer ones take up the politics involved in the bicycle debate. Among the short
stories, the first one is about a woman’s solo ride from West Bengal to Pondicherry. The other one
is about children and bicycle maintenance.

You can download the book here.

Contact the author here.