The Awakening

I still vividly remember that day, 12th of March 2014. There I was, sitting at my workstation on a sunny afternoon when I began to wonder how monotonous and boring life had become after college. Those long hours spent sitting in an 8 feet by 6 feet cubicle, those boring and mind numbing four hours I used to spend in a day commuting from home to work and back, those weekends spent with friends just sitting and cribbing about how much we missed college and how work life was totally boring.

We used to find a thousand and one reasons to fault everyone and everything around us for this. Be it the ‘Yaar time hi nahi milta hai aaj kal! Kaam hi itna hota hai’ to ‘Bhai, do din toh hote hai weekend mein. Aaram se chill maarte hai aur sote hai’ and the quintessential excuse of most of the Bangaloreans, ‘Pagal hai kya! Itna traffic hota hai, kaun bahar jayega!’. It was as if we had all programmed ourselves to believe that all this was a doing of factors that were completely out of our control. Never did we ever contemplate that all this was partly because we had started to take the easy way out of every problem and issue. And all this was happening because almost everyone around me thought the same way. It had just got engraved in my mind that we had all right to complain: Complain that our jobs were dull and boring, complain that we never got time for ourselves and complain that there was nothing much we could do about all of this.

That’s when I decided that it was time to do something about it. It was time to stop cribbing and take matters in my own hands. Not that I was looking at doing something revolutionary overnight. That never works out anyway. But then, I had decided to start taking small steps and see where they took me over a period of time. At least the idea of it got me really excited, considering the situation at that point of time, it seemed like a real good thing.

Then came the next question, what do I start with? Well, considering I’m a very outdoorsy person, I had decided to check out a few options relating to it. I did play football and squash every now and then, but the problem was that I always needed other people to be up for a game of two whenever I wanted to play. And convincing people, especially when it involved convincing 10-12 people for a game of football used to be one hell of a task. I decided to pick up an individual sport. So after a little bit of looking around here and there, I took a fancy for cycling. You might be wondering why so? Well, to be honest I have no idea why I chose it at that moment. Absolutely random!

After a little bit of surfing the internet, I had decided to head out to the Decathlon Whitefield store to purchase a Rockrider 5.1. At that point, the mere idea of owning a bike that costed upwards of 14,000 Rupees seemed to excite me to quite an extent. A few rides around the store after my bike was set up by the in-store mechanic and I was ready to go!

A lot has transpired since that day. From my first commute, which started from the Decathlon store to my previous office in Whitefield (when I was left panting and gasping for breath after that small 4 km ride), to the 150 km ride I did just two days back on a brand new bicycle that I had bought at the start of this month (All these experiences deserve a separate blog altogther)! There is a certain joy associated with watching yourself get better at something, slowly, but surely. And that’s a feeling that has stuck with me throughout this journey. These 3000 kilometers that I have ridden till now have taught me a quite a bit.

I’ve learnt a lot about how the mind and body work in tandem when you want to push yourself beyond your threshold limits. How its important to respect your equipment and know all about it because you don’t want to be stuck with a mechanical fault in the middle of nowhere. And how I’ve managed to forge innumerable friendships along the way with guys who are equally passionate (and in most cases, more accomplished ) about this sport. Most of all, I’ve learnt that one does not get anywhere by sitting back and cribbing. You’ve got to fight your inner demons, got to push yourself for that extra mile and look for that one tiny spark inside you that’s enough to get you out of your comfort zone. And one day you find that your attitude towards your passion begins to show in each and every aspect of your life.

You see, every big thing starts out from something small. Something that seems inconsequential to the larger scheme of things. But it’s when you start adding them up, bit by bit, day after day that you start feeling like you have really come a long way. I’m certainly no professional cyclist who can give gyaan about how to get better at cycling and stuff like that. But what I can say is this – find a passion, something that really excites you. You might have to try your hand at two-three things before you actually find your calling. But once you do, pursue it with all your heart. Give it all you’ve got. Thennot only will you start getting better at it, but also feel really positive and good about your accomplishments. And happiness is a really infectious disease. It’ll tend to transfuse into each and every thing that you do in your life. And in the end, that’s all that matters, being content with yourself.

As for me, I’ve still got a lot of cycling left to do. A lot of things to achieve in this sport. Not that I have set unrealistic goals like taking part in the Tour De France or something, but goals that I think are achieveable if I put my heart and soul into them. Goals that when added up slowly, will make me feel content, feel really happy about myself. And as I’ve stated before, in the end, that’s all that matters.

P.S. – Over the course of time I’ve realised that in most of the cases, cycling is not an individual sport.