The beginning of things...

Once upon a time the world had no context. Nothing was necessarily how it was meant to be. Everything was different, lopsided, random. What I mean to say is that there were no rules to be followed. God hadn't yet decided to create the world and so the bible did not exist. Nobody had simply 'let there be light' and 'let there be man'. And so it all existed in a crazy haphazard fashion.

The sun did not necessarily have nine planets and not all the planets revolved around the sun. In fact the sun revolved around the moon and the planets all swung from the moon through very very long and opaque celestial cables. These planets swung randomly from their pendulums tilting the moon this way and that. This created random days and nights for the planets as the shadow of the moon decided when it would be day and when it would be night. Sometimes it was day for weeks and sometimes it shifted from day to night every hour. These were confusing times.

Every now and then, the planets would bang against each other and people or species from the respective planets could get off and roam on the other planet. Such transfers happened often but they were unpredictable and not a soul had a clue as to when they would happen, who would come into their world and what the consequences would be. This was in the early days...before they realised they could use these collisions for trade or theft.

During the collisions strange species from two planets now called Mars and Venus came to planet earth (then called Peacetikette). In those days, before God appeared, Mars was called Moronikette and Venus was called Lunatikette and there were plenty of kette's (planets) in between swinging this way and that.  

The species were very different from what we see today. They came in all colours, shapes and size. Their skin could be velvet or pink or one of the lost colours from those times and their hair could be just like ours today or different, very different. It could be a mass of balls, it could be a bunch of tubes or it could be mound of hanging spiders. There was a lot of variety and there was nary a dull moment like there are today. 

They were different those times before everything began.

I had the whole world in my hands...

There’s something incredible about being small, frail and feeling like you can conquer the world! It’s a brilliant feeling...it fills you up with joy to the brim of your soul till you can hardly breathe and all of that joy comes forcefully out in a loud exhilarated laugh!

I had this feeling the first time I rode the bike without the side wheels on. I remember being quite a scraggly kid with thin long legs and I hardly had any hand to eye co-ordination. I could fall flat on my face simply while walking without there being even a pebble on the road. And then my parents got me this sweet little bike with side wheels. I was a queen on the tiny machine. The secret behind the confidence was that I would never fall and boy I was so afraid of falling that for a very long time I didn’t let them take the side wheels off.

My dad was my hero, always has been and always will be. He somehow managed to convince me that since I’d learnt to ride a bike, side wheels or no side wheels I wouldn’t fall. And so finally after six months I let him take them off. I sat on the bike nervous and excited, shaky and confident. He held the back of my seat and I peddled slowly in a wobbly manner. He held on encouraging me to go faster, to be confident and just go with the flow. I did and oh boy it was great for a few minutes till I realised he’d let go! I turned around, gasped in shock and almost immediately toppled over, scrapped my knee and started crying. I accused him of betraying my trust, ran home, complained to mom and refused to ride the bike with him ever again!

All my friends had bikes at that point and some even rode without the side wheels. I got teased a lot for making up excuses for not riding with them and since it was the most ‘in’ thing to do at that age, I ended up not having friends to spend time with as all of them were busy trying to become cycle gangsters!

So one day in pure frustration I got on my bike and started riding with my friends. I rode looking carefree but inside I was shit scared that I would lose balance and fall down and everybody would laugh...but that didn’t happen. I rode and there were four-five of us racing the winds. I was so high...I was so overjoyed...I was the queen of the world and I could fly on my little bike. I had never felt so free and exhilarated in my life! 

Though I ended up cycling due to peer pressure, I’ll always give this one to my dad who patiently tried to help me overcome my fears. I had the whole world in my hands that day.