Cycling School

Cycling School

1955-56, he passed his tenth class through Verinagh High School with distinction. For higher studies, he joined Khanabal Degree College, Anantnagh. To avoid daily to and fro expenses on bus fair and to save time, he shifted to his mother’s sister at Anantnagh. He was provided with a separate room for his studies and pin drop silence around the study was assured and maintained without any promulgation.

The family earned a special status in the locality for his being the first intermediate scholar at the Degree College, Khanabal. The aunt earned the status of a special aunt.

Soon he became a very important person in the house. He laid his hand on the old bicycle of his cousin. He boasts that he did not join any Cycling School or any Driving School later on.

The only fault with his cycling was that his reflexes failed when he needed to apply brakes to his outdated borrowed bicycle. It mattered little to him when he struck against the gate of the Shereen Bagh. The bruises all over his body could be escaped in case of timely response of his reflexes.

One day on his return from the college, his attention was concentrated on the onlookers. The bicycle almost brushed a female pedestrian. Her father seized collar of the naïve cyclist and dragged him to SSP’s office chamber instead to the Police station.

The culprit tore his own shirt clandestinely and complained that he was beaten by the Pundit Ji despite his plea that he was naïve cyclist and event was not a deliberate one.

The SSP in his chair was a serene and a tall person suited to the chair. The culprit, seeing a towering personality in the chair turned pale. He baffled and pleaded innocence. The complainant was conscious that the crime was not rarest of the rare so pleaded vehemently for a minimum life imprisonment. The accused heaved a sigh of relief when he was set free with a warning to be careful thereafter.

Later on in 1965 he qualified KPS and submitted his joining report as Dy.S P to the then DIG D N Koul IPS (retired IGP, Jammu & Kashmir). He was apprehensive lest Koul Sahib remember his advice of 1955 to the then a naïve cyclist.