Repairing a puncture

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!!