Free Wheeling

Mridula Koshy’s ‘Bicycle Dreaming’ leads us through the vivid and physical spaces of Delhi’s urban poor and the hierarchies that exist within seen through the eyes of its 13-year-old protagonist, Noor, daughter of a kabadiwala

- Poonam Ganglani

I found that I enjoyed Mridula Koshy’s Bicycle Dreaming most fully when I was reading it by myself, in a quiet room. The world within its pages, grounded in realities and spaces so different from my own, flowed beyond the book’s frame and seemed to demand the kind of engagement that can only come with solitude.

It is through the experiences of Noor, the daughter of a kabadiwala in Chirag Dilli, that the narrative of Bicycle Dreaming unfolds. Despite its imperfections, Noor’s world has some semblance of order at first. She has just turned thirteen and dreams of owning a green bicycle even though she has never learned to ride one. She also plans to become Delhi’s first kabadiwali when she grows up, following in her father’s footsteps. But slowly, the threads of Noor’s world begin to come loose. Her best friend Haseena, on whom she relies to help her make better sense of things, disappears to her village. Her father Mohammad Saidullah, a loving and stoic man, loses his job collecting scraps from the homes of Panchsheel Colony; he is compelled instead to search for scraps near the incinerators in the city’s sooty landfills. Her older brother Talib, whose desire for a shinier life is irreconcilable with his father’s choices, chooses to leave home. And her mother Ameena, succumbing to her biases towards her son as she unravels them, follows Talib to his new home in Chattarpur. Noor is left by herself to take care of her father and to come to grips with the shifting plates of her life: