( How Global Geopolitics Put an Old Man Back in the Saddle)
The US-Iran conflict, now
dragging into what feels like its permanent state of managed menace, has been
doing something beyond rattling oil markets and unsettling foreign policy
analysts. It has been quietly but insistently forcing ordinary citizens — those
of us who fill petrol tanks and watch fuel prices with the resigned anxiety of
people who know they have no choice — to ask an uncomfortable question: what
happens when the oil actually runs out, or becomes so expensive that it
effectively does?
Governments will deliberate.
Economists will model. Committees will be constituted. The common man,
meanwhile, will need to get to work.
I decided to act.
Not with a white paper. Not
with a strongly worded letter to the editor. With a retrofitted electric cycle.
The Decision and the Sceptic
Sometime during the first week
of May 2026, with the conflict showing no signs of resolution and petrol prices
trending in only one direction, I called my son Skandan and asked him to source
two battery-fitted cycles — one for Chennai city commute, one for my village home
in Dharmarajapuram. The logic was simple, if slightly ahead of its time: when
fossil fuels become genuinely unaffordable or unavailable, the man with an
electric cycle will be mobile. Everyone else will be stranded.
Skandan received this strategic
vision with the measured scepticism of a man who loves his father but has also
observed him for several decades. There was a brief silence. Then: “Are you
serious? You think you can ride after so many years?”
I said nothing. I am a man of
vision. Vision does not explain itself.
The cycle was duly procured,
and assembled the very next day by Patcha — Skandan’s father-in-law, a retired
chartered engineer and a man of
admirable practical competence. All that remained was the inaugural ride. A
mere 3 kilometres, from Skandan’s apartment back to mine. On a Sunday evening.
On a battery-fitted cycle I had never ridden before. After a gap of over three
decades and another half.
What could go wrong.
The Assembly, the Anticipation, and the Council of Dogs
I wheeled the cycle down from
the apartment platform with what I hoped was the air of a seasoned cyclist
merely warming up, only to discover that the exit pathway was occupied. Five
street dogs sat in solemn conclave across the only route out, deep in what
appeared to be a committee meeting of considerable gravity. They had not
cleared their calendar for my departure.
My granddaughters — Hiranya,
the elder at ten, and Keerthi, the younger one of six — were already perched on
Skandan’s scooter, primed to follow me home and ensure the old man arrived in
one piece. They issued immediate counsel: Thatha, don’t upset the dogs. They
are downright nasty guys” I considered their advice for approximately one
and a half seconds. Then I shooed the dogs firmly and without negotiation. The
parliament dissolved with a few murmurs. I rolled down the ramp onto the
street.
The great expedition had begun.
The Lemon, the Yelling, and the Giggling Gallery
It was approximately thirty
seconds into the open road that I made a discovery of some consequence. The
cycle had no bell. No horn. No whistle. No auditory warning device of any
description whatsoever. It was a silent machine in a city that communicates exclusively
through sound — horns, bells, the creative percussion of vehicles asserting
their right of way at every junction.
I had two options. Turn back.
Or yell.
I yelled.
Hello, Ayya, Thambi! Careful! Coming
through! Move, move! — delivered at varying volumes depending on the
proximity of the threat and the apparent hearing capacity of the person or
vehicle in question. I became, in effect, a human horn. A retrofit of a
retrofit. I informed Skandan over my shoulder, between two such announcements,
that the cycle company had sold us a complete lemon.
Behind me, the granddaughters
dissolved into giggles that did not stop for the better part of half a
kilometre. Skandan maintained a straight face. He is his father’s son.
Battery Anxiety and the Apollo Prophecy
The first stretch was, in every
other respect, a revelation. The evening air, the hum of the motorized wheels,
the road opening up ahead — thirty years dissolved in about thirty seconds. The
body remembered. The legs found their rhythm.
But somewhere in the middle of
that first comfortable kilometre, I felt it. The battery — which had not been
fully charged before my arrival — was already beginning to flag. The motor was
losing heart even before we reached the Apollo Pharmacy ahead.
I turned toward the scooter
behind me and delivered what I consider one of my finer comic observations of
the evening: “This EV may not even last up to Apollo Pharmacy.”
It very nearly didn’t. The
motor faded to a whisper. I pedalled on under my own steam — not the desperate
pedalling of a man in crisis, but the steady, purposeful pedalling of a man
recalibrating his expectations of modern technology. Somewhere around the
pharmacy, after I had done sufficient honest work with my legs, the battery
appeared to recover its courage. The motor hummed back to life. I turned right
and pressed on.
The Hillranger: 1. Battery
anxiety: 0. For now.
The Villivakkam Subway: Sixty Seconds of Truth
Of everything that lay between
Skandan’s apartment and mine, it was the Villivakkam subway that had occupied
my imagination well before the ride began. Not the dogs. Not the traffic. Not
the battery. Not even the absence of a bell, which I had by then partially
compensated for with lung power. The subway.
That long, sloping underpass —
down one side, level through the tunnel, and then the climb back up on the
other end — had been the subject of considerable private anxiety. Would the
battery hold? Would the legs hold? Would I grind to an embarrassing halt in the
middle of a Chennai underpass on a Sunday evening, requiring retrieval?
I had shared these fears with
Skandan, who had said nothing reassuring, which is how I knew he shared them.
He and the granddaughters followed me into the tunnel rather than waiting on
the other side — a small but telling decision. They weren’t sure I would make
it through unassisted.
Keerthi had already registered
her assessment: “Thatha, I bet you will not get past the subway.” Six
years old and already a realist.
The time was around nine in the
evening. A Sunday, mercifully, so the traffic was light. I gathered myself,
deployed whatever kinetic energy the downslope could offer, kept the pedals
turning, and went.
I emerged on the other side
gasping, triumphant, and approximately ten years older than when I had entered.
Behind me, Skandan exhaled. Hiranya broke the silence: “Look at Thatha
speeding away to glory!”
I chose to accept this at face
value.
The PTC Bus and the Wisdom of the Footpath
MTH Road was otherwise
manageable. The evening traffic was thin, the road wide, the motor cooperative.
Then a PTC bus (MTC bus in today’s Chennai) materialised on the highway with
the authority of something that has right of way over everything, including
citizens making principled statements about energy independence on electric
cycles. Skandan accelerated ahead to assess. I eased onto the footpath and
waited, with great dignity, for the monster to pass.
There are those who might call
this retreat. I prefer the phrase situational awareness.
The Security Guard, the Basement, and the Question That Went Unanswered
My apartment building appeared
ahead. I turned in through the gates, flushed with quiet satisfaction, and was
greeted by the security guard.
He looked at me. Then at the
cycle. Then back at me. It was the long, slow, carefully neutral look of a man
trying to determine whether the resident he had known as a person of means had
suffered some catastrophic reversal of fortunes, arriving home on an elementary
retrofitted bicycle at nine o’clock on a Sunday night, hollering at
pedestrians. I gave him my most dignified nod and rolled past before he could
arrive at any conclusions. He kept glancing back at me, probably guessing that
I had lost my marbles.
Down the ramp to the basement.
I rolled to a stop.
I had made it. 3 kilometres.
One dog parliament. One failing battery. One bell-less cycle compensated for by
vocal cords. One subway of existential dread. One PTC bus. One security guard’s
eloquently sceptical expression.
Hiranya clapped —
enthusiastically, genuinely. Skandan swung his scooter around to leave. And in
that moment, Hiranya turned to me and asked, with the timing of someone who has
inherited a certain instinct for the well-placed question:
“Thatha — when did you last
ride a bicycle?”
Before I could answer, her
father had sped away into the Chennai night.
The question, dear reader, is
worth sitting with. Because embedded in it is a larger one that the US-Iran
conflict, the oil markets, and the petrol pump queues of the near future are
going to put to all of us very soon: when did we last think seriously about
how we move through the world, and whether we can do it without fossil fuels?
I have my answer. It came on
two wheels, on a Sunday evening, with a flat battery and no bell.
The old man is ready. Are
you?
