A couple of weeks ago on Dussehra, I decided to revive riding my bicycle to work. I had started cycling during the pandemic and occasionally indulged in short spurts whenever my weighing scale issued a warning. It’s a sublime 20-minute ride to work, where you sweat just enough not to require a shower on reaching, the air conditioning in the operation theatre evaporating the perspiration from your pores in a jiffy.

I chose a public holiday (Dussehra), because it was my first time cycling after the monsoon, and I didn’t want the bane of the city’s traffic to interfere with my joy. Also, I simply needed to round on all my admitted patients and was to be back by lunch. There was no surgery or patients in the clinic to be seen. So, I cleaned the desolate domestic dust of the indoors that had settled on the bicycle, pumped the tires with air, put on my helmet, and took off.