Discover: The Bike & Biking

It's been two weeks since I have been riding my new bike, Discover from Bajaj. As Chit asked for the pics, I thought that I might bundle a short post along with those, detailing my first experiences of riding in Pune, which is considered the two wheeler capital of India.

When I took admission in Symbiosis Institute of Geoinformatics, [SIG for short; ] I had realized that I would have to bike everyday to college, since it's about 7.5 K.m. from home, and no India city can boast of such an efficient and comprehensive Transport system like Mumbai.

With this am in mind I had asked my cousin brother to teach me some stuff, coz he is a total petrosexual, and he bikes to his college in Andheri. The first two sessions went exceedingly well, but at the end of the second session, after riding beautifully for two hours, I skidded on a turn, just below my house.

After scraping my skin and injuring my ego, my knee was immobile for almost a fortnight, so practicing more was out of the question. By the time I could flex my leg, it was time to shift to Pune. Thus When I bought the bike, and took delivery on the 31st of July, all I had, was the experience of about 3 hrs, that too on safe roads which were unfrequented by traffic.

So Was I prepared?
No.
Was it stupid and naive?
Definitely.
Was it fun?
Not so Much.
Am I better off because of it?
No doubt about it.


The roads in Pune are terrible, and with the incessant rains, they have literally gone down the drain. You cannot figure out whether you are driving on Gravel or the ruins of a road. And on my everyday route, they are building a flyover. This has slowed down traffic so much that it takes about 25 minutes on a 600m stretch. The portholes on the road are numerous, and the surface would provide excellent practice for future astronauts, wishing to travel on the moon.

It was in conditions like these that I am learning to ride. The thing about learning on your own is that there is no one to tell you where you are going wrong. In fact you do not even know whether you are going wrong or not. Thus you keep on repeating the same things, and wonder why you are not getting the expected results.

For example: My bike is a 125 cc, electric start version. The important point is that you don’t have to go in neutral every time, and kick start it. You can just press the clutch, press a switch, and the engine roars into action. This means theoretically you can start in any gear, though it is not recommended. What happens when you do this is that you have to delicately let go of the clutch and rotate the accelerator at the same time.

As it is, my hands are not very delicate. They are digital, not analog. I can give either full force, or no force; something in between is very difficult, and almost impossible to control. Because of this, the engine used to stall, frequently with a lot of traffic honking behind me. You can imagine how difficult it must have been for me, and how much of a handicap I suffered.

Today, it struck me that I did not suffer from this problem when I was using the kick start, and this solved my dilemma. While using the kick start, I used to start the motion in first gear, which is made for exactly that reason. Using the electric start, I used to try to start moving at a higher gear, and these usually fall when the bike is in motion.

If someone was teaching me, he would have found this fault long back, but learning on my own, I had to figure it out by myself. After this, I truly enjoyed riding for the first time in a fortnight.
It was this moment of self discovery that I truly cherished; I also understood why I love Physics, but still hated it in TY.

It was this self discovery that I was missing in TY. Earlier I could calculate and derive formulae and model situations, and they corresponded to reality. In TY, I could follow the derivations, but they did not relate to an immediate reality for me. I was missing the feeling of figuring out things on my own; the mythical 'Joy of finding things out'.

On this note, let me show you my bike