Rain creates an atmosphere: trees sway darkly thrashing their arms around; wind whooshes past your ears whispering and warning sounds indecipherable; and rainwater soaks the roads and submerges the trails, pooling in dark brown quagmires of mud daring you to step in so it could swallow you. Hundreds of years ago perhaps rain could stop everything — even Buddhist monks sworn to peregrinate for life stayed at one place during monsoon season — but now the city doesn’t stop for rain, or for anything. The neon lights emanating from the shops lining the streets cast a piercing stare at the surrounding darkness, smirk, and mock disdainfully: “Commerce comes first, you elemental demons from the bygone age! The humans may have prayed to you in the past, but they pray to us now.”
It is late evening and the darkness crouches under the umbrellas of trees, stealthily watching. At my first floor balcony, I lean over the rail to squint at the pearly white cone of light emanating from the lonely streetlamp standing forlorn opposite the house to spot the dash lines of rain. Is it still dripping? Drip, drip, drip. Rain can persist for hours, neither ceasing quietly nor committing fully, a situationship between Heaven and Earth. The reason I am leaning over is that I have to go cycling. It is 7.30 and I must go. Habits are strange mechanisms, physical and metaphysical, which once formed and actuated, the rest of life is centered around and steered by them; everything else arranges, rearranges, and shuffles itself around those repetitious processes. And I have just one habit: to haul myself from the characteristic lethargic-depressive state altering in tempo through the day, and get the body moving, get some physical exertion. Everything else is negotiable; I am playing fast and loose with nearly everything anyway, not having held a job for about three years now. When everything is optional, one thing that is not becomes sacred, almost ritualistic and sacramental. So, I have struck out through wind and rain, in summer and winter, at dawn and dusk, in this city and that city.
I love cycling; I love running too for that matter, but the former is much swifter and easy going than the latter. And these days I am alternating between the two depending on my north star, mood. Running is perhaps one of the most grueling athletic activities. I am dragging myself; I am the engine as well as the train. And if I stop, there is no help. If I stop the synchronized motion of arms and legs as my heart is rattling in my chest (how does it stay in one place?) and my lungs are wheezing in protest, the whole thing comes to a panting halt. Nothing is happening. I am just standing there, sweat frothing out of my head like a garden sprinkler and my legs creaking like old timber. Cycling is a breeze in comparison. A few strokes on the pedals and I am a spectator gliding through the city streets. In fact, to make it more challenging, I shoot for the speed, as much as I can get. And it can get really fast. I am generally cautious and situationally aware on the road, yet, twice in fact, I bruised myself badly because some vehicle crawled out of a dark narrow alleyway and appeared suddenly right in front of me, and to avoid the collision I squeezed the brakes all the way. The funny thing is, the bicycle stopped where it should have, but I didn’t — I went flying headlong into the concrete and used my arms to shield myself. That is Physics for you. Bicycle being lighter than me, the friction from the brakes was enough to bring its momentum to zero, but since I weigh almost four times as much as the bicycle, I had four times as much momentum (mass x velocity) than that of the bicycle, leading to me flying like a frightened squirrel, except squirrels have aerodynamic bodies and can, I assume, land safely on the ground; I on the other hand hit the gravelly concrete artlessly and moaned a while sitting at the pavement. It shocks me how frail the human body is. I don’t think there is a lesson here. You lick your wounds, you flail against destiny (and scream profanities), and you keep pedaling. No matter how broken you are, you have to get home somehow.