What It Is Actually Like Riding A Bike As A Girl In India

 

I got my bike a little over a year ago and I still remember how many people had an opinion about it before I had even ridden it out of the showroom. My uncle asked my dad why he was letting me have something so heavy. A random aunty in my building asked my mother if I was getting married soon as if riding a bike and getting married were somehow connected. None of this was said with any real hostility it was just this casual assumption sitting underneath everything that a bike is not really something a girl is supposed to want. That assumption follows me almost every single day I take it out and honestly after a while you start noticing just how deep it runs.

Then there is the assumption that I must be a bad rider simply because I am a girl. The number of times someone has yelled unsolicited advice at a signal is honestly exhausting. If I brake a little late someone will loudly declare that this is exactly why girls should not ride. If a man does the same exact thing nobody says a word. I have had guys try to overtake me aggressively just to prove they can go faster as if my presence on the road was some kind of challenge to their ego. My riding gets judged on a completely different scale than everyone else around me and one small mistake gets blown up into proof that I never should have gotten on a bike in the first place.

The orthodox mindset shows up in quieter ways too and honestly those are the ones that get to me the most. Relatives asking my parents if they are worried about my safety in a tone that suggests the real problem is that I ride at all rather than how anyone actually drives around here. Being told that riding late in the evening is inappropriate for a girl even though my male friends do it without anyone batting an eye. Someone once told my mother that boys who ride bikes seem confident but girls who ride bikes seem like they are trying too hard to prove something. Nobody ever explains what exactly I am supposed to be proving I just wanted to get to college on time without depending on someone else's schedule.

What keeps me going despite all of this is that the ride itself never actually cares about any of these opinions. The wind does not ask if I am a girl before it hits my face and the road does not treat me differently because of it. I have met a handful of other girls who ride and every time we cross paths there is this quiet nod between us like we both know exactly what the other has been through to get here. Slowly more girls around me are picking up bikes of their own even if their families take a while to come around to the idea. I do not think the staring or the comments are going to disappear overnight and honestly I have stopped expecting them to. But every single day I ride is one more small dent in the idea that this was never supposed to be mine to begin with and that alone makes it worth it.