Cycle acrobats were a thing in the past. In circus, in local legends, in stories, in memoirs, cycle acrobats shined in the otherwise dull background.

Kalpetta Narayanan describes a cycle acrobat in Konthala. My mother often told me the story of a neighbour who used to labour the whole day working on construction sites and in the evening be tempted into competing with the local youth on slow cycling, only to lose day after day as he would be tired after the workday. The young men knew this and kept plundering him. I wonder what makes the cycle so wonderul. For humans who mastered standing on two legs that are in a side-by-side configuration, the cycle, and its ability to stay upright on two wheels one before the other should have been less of an enigma. Further, the scientific explanations of gravity and forces ought to have reduced the cycle to a phenomena that was no longer magical. The cycle has been emptied of magic for most of its life, but it disrupts the fabric of ordinary life every now and then, especially when it falls. Maybe there is much to learn from bicycles. An unhurried writing.