The joys of cycling

First there was the cycle.Its started with a few faltering steps taken in Bangalore to get me seriously hooked.Of course nothing compares to real cycling as opposed to the many cycles in the gym.Perhaps all that gym activity made the real bike seem less alien.Thanks to having friends with grown up children(read children who have outgrown their cycles) I got myself a second hand cycle.The next challenge is to get it into working condition(the child in question had outgrown it by at least a year)Nothing in our house happens without the tacit understanding and help of our domestic help,the ironing man,the watchman and the local hangers on.Of course all their sympathies lie with the man of the house(the untold reaction being that women above a certain age must behave so and not indulge in childhood pursuits).After two days of constant reminders,(and after the husband had told all his sympathisers that if the cycle wasn't in running condition in the next day or two,he was in danger of being starved)the ironing man(chap who irons our clothes and is the local fixer)took the cycle today and got it all spruced up and ready.Of course considering I am a novice it would be prudent to keep cycle testing for a time when the road is clear of all human kind and the automobile kind (there are enough people waiting to see the fun).Our road has some four and a half kids who play on the road between four thirty to six in the evenings.Unfortunately they are all at an age when they are too young to appreciate that learning anything new after forty is an uphill task and requires bravery.Since they don't understand,they tend to hang around and gape.So I wait patiently to see them go back to their homes but as usual the gods conspire against me and,instead of the usual kids,there i was seeing some ten little boys pour out of one house which till date didn't have a child to its credit.The clock ticks and I wait patiently till the last of the brats disappears and then the fun begins.First step is to unchain the bike(the paranoid husband has locked it to a post to prevent it being stolen,though i can still find ways to steal it)The next challenge is to unlock the bike.Being blind as a bat,this takes some doing,but by now I am pretty good at braille so the next step is crossed.Then comes the actual riding.Now we are talking of an empty road and a woman who under normal circumstances is considered old to be learning to ride.But for the average roadside romeo a woman of any age is a woman,so while I struggle to get my grip,there was this young blade who got some cheap trill of cycling by too close.Of course this is lost on me for the moment(everything dawns on me much later to the frustration of such young blades who don't always get their trills as there is no reaction from me).Once i get the hang of it its that wonderful feeling again.This place of course has seen me learn to ride a scooter and a car on these very same roads so its with a sense of deja vu that i set off to ride and enjoy myself.If this is exercise then I am all for it.After the initial fits and starts,I am off crossing the road to my old street and back.Some forty five minutes later feeling rather good about myself I get back home and announce to the mother that I have been out cycling.Her reaction is enough to deflate even the most optimistic(is the bike still in working condition she asks in all earnestness....well looking at the cycle in question,it doesn't look like it can bear the weight of a seventy kilos)but as I have lived with her all my life,I let it wash over me without turning a hair and I am going to be back to cycling and the joys of learning new skills tomorrow

paper tigers

one believes that all paperwork must end the moment one retires,or rather I believed thus.Today my happy existence was shattered by the piles of paper work I discovered I needed to do.Its starts with having to pay taxes.Now that really takes the cake.Why would one unemployed woman be expected to pay taxes,is beyond my comprehension.But truth be told that's exactly what the government expects one to do.It seems that to get all this tax business done,one needs to get all the paperwork in order.Now I have been one of those lucky ones who always had a man Friday to do my accounting and filing.I miss the one boy in my life who made it all seem so easy but he has since exited my life so here I am doomed to handle all this myself.The first thing one needs to know(or so the husband informs me) is to file by date.I spent the entire afternoon putting piles of paper into monthly piles to be filed in that order.Its no fun when the mother comments that I remind her of her grandfather who did this on a regular basis.It seems to run in the family all this last minute work and if its genetic then there is no way I can escape.Why I wonder cant i be the simple housewife that I have become(no one believes that I can be a simple housewife though why it beats me) who is dependent on her husband to take care of all this.Well it seems that the is no rest for the wicked especially when the wicked have a history of having managed all their affairs for the last twenty years with no help from the husband.Oh well its time to tackle more files so to work to work I go.....