The bicycle today has become an item of luxury and a fitness accessory for many of us. For people from my generation–having grown up in the late 80s and 90s–the humble bicycle would find a mention in our parents’ nostalgia trips, famed stories of how they travelled from one end of a city or town to another on them. I would often hear my mother and her siblings wax lyrical about their father’s (my grandfather) bicycle, which is a constant companion in so many of his old pictures. Since all of my mother’s sisters lived in New Delhi. I’d often hear about my grandfather, the late Atulya Kumar Banerjee’s travels’, particularly about an epic bicycle journey that he undertook in his 20’s from Calcutta to Kashmir in 1933.
My maternal uncle or Mama, Aurobindo Banerjee, a retired IRS officer told me all about it after noticing my growing curiosity after my older brother and I discovered a set of letters and pictures tucked away…