Just
as I took out my bicycle to go on a short ride, on a Sunday morning, I realized
that its front tyre had gone flat. I walked it to a nearby shop where the
shopkeeper filled it with air for a cost of couple of rupees. Just as he was filling it, he looked at it
suspiciously, and asked me to wait for a few minutes before moving. As he
seemed to have thought, the front tyre again went flat.
“Punctured?”
I asked, a little annoyed at fate. He smiled and indicated that he would be able
to fix it in five minutes once he has settled his tool-kit.
He
asked me to put my bicycle next to his tool-kit and set on to his task to
repair a puncture. At first he took out the tyre and checked the outer surface
for any sharp object that might have caused the puncture in first place, quietly
he ran through the entire tyre, looking sensitively for anything that needed to
be removed. On not finding anything obvious, he wasn’t disappointed – he pushed
the sides of the tyre a little and plucked the tube from within, slowly took
out the entire inner tube out, a little by little. Once the tube was out, he
filled it with air again and passed it through a bucket of water, small portion
at a time, in order to check for bubbles to identify a possible puncture. After
a while, he finally succeeded and found the puncture. After a little bit of
scrubbing with rough glass paper, he put a solution and taped the punctured
area well, blew some air in order to dry the solution. He then checked the
remaining tube for any other punctures, and then put the tube again in the
tyre, carefully plugged it in and refilled it with more air. And then finally
put the tyre back, fixed the bolts and put my bicycle in front of me with a
triumphant smile.
While
seeing all this, a fascinating analogy ran through my mind as I was
contemplating a journey. Just like the bicycle we also undertake so many
journeys and roads are not always perfect. As our bicycle runs through the
lanes of life it might get punctured once in a while, a thorn came, or a bad
pot-hole, a careless run on a surface where broken pieces of glass were spread
– or just plain depreciation by multitudes of runs and neglected care. All
these things can cause punctures in our life, and in order to be quick, nimble and
fully functional we must fix these occasional punctures too.
In
the context of above thought, skills of puncture repairing seemed one of the
most important life skills. How wonderful it would be if one were to be able to
take out the entire inner side once in a while and check for possible
punctures, and fix if any.
I am
sure many of us possess this skill; the need is perhaps only to let the surface
run through, inwards examined and repaired if needed!!
Bicycle
is now up and running!!
