The Sticking Pain of Losing a Bicycle


I should have moved on by now, four months since my almost new bicycle was stolen by two miscreants. I have been busy, painfully trying to get back to fulltime work after my sabbatical. Yet the incident, my helplessness about it, and further distrust in the police force continue to harass me. The pain was shortlived when it was voluntary separation of a similar kind.

Thinking about it, I’ve never lost a thing that I was emotionally attached to to theft before. My copy of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake was stolen during my Master’s convocation ceremony a few years ago. I haven’t bought another copy yet (because it was my second read at that time) but I don’t think about it over and over again. In fact, I hadn’t thought about it before writing it here. You could say it’s too small of an object to lose. I was mildly upset that day because I had scribbled notes in some of the pages. They are lost forever, but I’m heartened by the assumption that whoever stole the book is a reader herself, so it’s gonna serve her well. Also because there was another thing that had upset me more that day.

The same assumption should have consoled me in the case of the bicycle, but it hasn’t. Every time I see a bicycle (even if it’s not a mountain bike) these days, it instantly reminds me of mine and how I could have been riding it. It’s a continuous reminder because there’s a bicycle every few hundred metres when I’m out. I even saw a bicycle strapped to a pole near my workplace last month. There are two bicycles—one of which I’m sure has been ridden maybe once since it was bought and that was on the way from the shop—parked near the ground floor landing of my apartment building. I see them every day unless I don’t venture out.

Suffice to say that bicycles are everywhere and they remind me of my own. I’m happy those two cycles in my building are now strapped to the railing. Before the incident, they were as precariously parked as was mine.

I’m putting part of the blame to my distressed state of mind. After having worked from home for more than three years, followed by five months of “doing nothing”, I get more anxious at work now. It’s taking me longer to adjust around people in a setting that I’m not familiar with. Although it has more to do with the type of managerial roles that I’m taking up where you work with fewer people, or as in the case of my last job, two. I’m not crazy yet to not cope but I have made a few terrible decisions since around this same time last year that are enough proof to tell me that my pain isn’t totally unwarranted.

Someone hinted that maybe I should get a new bicycle that will help me tide over the melancholy. It’s good advise but I feel it’s better if I think it through because bicycles are obscenely expensive these days. I don’t think even my stolen one was worth all that money. Blame it on the post-covid fitness enthusiasm wave where every other person is into a fad regime, the more timid ones like me taking up bicycle riding.

The aftermath of the incident has taught me a thing or two about theft prevention. I have been asking my friends if there was anything I could have done to get my cycle back but they all seemed to suggest there was none. I’m forced to agree with them and come to the conclusion that I should have spent a little more effort in preventing the theft in the first place. Mind you, I had been looking for a way to secure my cycle since the day I bought it. Honestly, I was more worried about theft when I’m out and about with my cycle. Those thieves proved me wrong; it’s easier to steal a bicycle from its resting place. A chain and lock were ready to be deployed but I gave into procrastination. A little effort then would have made theft more difficult and I wouldn’t be writing this today.

Yet here I am taking extra effort and keeping my motorbike handle-locked all the time, attaching and locking my helmet to it even if it’s just an ATM visit, and taking extra care of my belongings. Maybe I needed this. Maybe I need to learn how to let go and experiment it better with objects before I start losing people.


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