I’m covered with road grit — it’s all over my arms and legs, it’s built up at my joints, behind my ears, and lines the band of untanned skin under my watch, supplementing splendidly my horrendous sunburn. As I sit here at the office nursing my wounds, I fight to suppress a smile while the thoughts of my experiences bicycling in the city pull me elsewhere. As the sun rises over the sea, the city streets begin to stir; barges loom in the distance, and crows case the sand for skittering crabs. It’s 6.30am and I sit on a curb near my bicycle at Marina Beach. There’s nothing better than a morning at the ocean for a farm boy who’s living outside of his landlocked homeland for the first time.I take Santhome High Road and the lighthouse slowly comes into view as the ocean speeds by on my left. I zip south of the lighthouse and pass the open fish market, which slowly comes to life as fishing boats lay idly among the nets on the beach after their morning run. On my right are gutted concrete structures made habitable by tarps and woven palm leaves, and on the left, wooden pallets heavy with the briny aroma of the morning’s catch.It’s quiet, and thoroughly enjoyable. There’s nothing quite like seeing the city on a bicycle, but I’ve learned some valuable lessons about traversing the streets of Chennai. Generally, the people are very friendly. Their usual reaction is something like “Oh, you’re foreign! You must be lost,” and most of the time, they’re right. I’m obliged to ask them for directions in order to supplement the spectacularly terrible map I’d purchased when I arrived in the city.While Chennaiites are always happy to help, if one gets behind the wheel of a car, it’s every man for himself. One thing I’m not used to, being a foreigner, is the constant struggle of watching motorists vie to fight through the gridlock. Back in the US, there are definite spaces for cycles and for cars, and is understood that cycles have the right of way because of their inferiority in accident recovery technology. However, cycles here have to fight hard on the streets, and the lanes reserved for them are usually occupied by pedestrians. Oh, and the occasional car cruising down the wrong side of the road still throws me for a loop.I had one specific experience that taught me the importance of taking side streets. One morning on my cycle, I noticed that the sidewalks were beginning to disappear, and I was being forced onto the roadway. After nearly being sandwiched between a pair of blaring city buses, I realised that because of my evasive manoeuvring, I was going to be riding into oncoming traffic. I once again commenced pumping my legs as hard as I could and ringing my bell as much as possible in a 50-foot sprint to overtake another bus.After setting a world record for wearing out a bicycle bell, the gravity of the situation finally dawned on me, and I decided that taking side streets from then onwards might be a good idea. Now, as I fly down the narrow alleyways on my massive mountain cycle, blowing past packs of dogs, cows, and unidentifiable things hanging in shop windows, I turn heads and am subject to angry shouts and gestures from workmen or young cricketers as I blow past. I find it hard not to smile, you get to see all sorts of things when you take the back alleys. I snap back into focus briefly to assess what I’d missed of my meeting, but I can’t help but drift back to the street.
Comments
0 comment