Connaught Place has childhood memories living in each corner and childhood has cycling memories living in each corner of the soul. Travellers, street-hawkers, students, bookshops, travel agents, dhabas, restaurants, cafe’s, jhumkawaalas, fills up a lot about CP, which I fondly call Dilli’s heart, but there rests a bit of emptiness too.
It happened while strolling around, that I saw a restaurant, shut for renovation and cycles parked in front of it. My eyes went towards the alley way and I saw a person, unlocking his cycle, tied with a chain to a pillar, to embark upon a journey. This got stuck in my mind. The emptiness got completed by the parked cycles on every 5-6th pillar of the Inner-Outer circle.
I could spot Avon, Hero, Neelam, Atlas and the list went on and on as I sauntered around Dilli’s heart in search of a Firefox, but hardly saw any of it. One of the cycles had a round mirror, a cycle with a blue seat I clicked weeks ago, stood there as it is, tied with a brass hook, looking a bit privileged. A window was drawn on the wall above this blue-seater.
Two cycles stood together in many corners of dilli, giving each other company. Imagine two friends coming together, or else, one waiting for the other to come to park the cycles together. It’s a bond. And many bondings can be observed in the heart of Dilli. A cycle rests with two slippers and an old scooter, in front of the Iconic, India Post Office. A watchman parks his cycle with pink coloured handles in front of his work place.
The grunginess on the bell, the rust on the cycle’s carrier, the torn parts of the seat, reflects the beauty of a lifetime one would have spent on the cycle, I mean it’s similar to what we call ‘life’ too.
Circles in a Circle. The shackles of hard-work, the responsibility towards nature, the way of life, lives in these wheels. But, what’s most important is their thoughts remain parked free, but locked in some corner, in solitude, in the world of loneliness, in the world of togetherness...waiting to embark upon a journey.
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