Sreejith Nair never forgot his first set of wheels, which he got when he was all of 12 years old. It was a BSA Street Cat bicycle. The wheels of time moved on and when Sreejith took up a job in Dubai as an automobile engineer, he still had not outgrown his love for bicycles. “Cycles have been a passion since childhood. Since then, I have always owned a bicycle, even when I was working in Dubai and Muscat,” says Sreejith, now in his thirties.
In fact, his years in the automobile industry revived his interest in bicycles. “I realised how terribly the world, especially the automobile industry, has been misusing fossil fuels and other resources,” explains Sreejith.
Eventually, when he put in his papers in 2011 and returned home to Thiruvananthapuram, the red Giant cycle that he used to ride in Dubai travelled back with him. The same year he also became a collector of bicycles.
Sreejith Nair’s GT Pro Performer
His home in Sasthamangalam is a veritable showroom of different kinds of bicycles. The problem of plenty must be making it difficult for Sreejith to choose his kind of wheels from his collection of 25 bicycles! A blood red BTwin FC700 is dazzlingly stylish, while weighing hardly eight kg. A cute, little GT Pro Performer, with its yellow body and blue tyres, feels like it belongs to an era gone by. A tandem bike, a tricycle and two unicycles are some of the other show-stoppers in the impressive collection.
The models in the collection vary in size, functionality and price. While the BTwin FC700 made of carbon composite is a high-end racing bike, the Infinite Zeal fat bike, with wide tires, is an all-purpose vehicle aimed at comfort riding. There are three BMX stunt bikes in the collection too. A Merlin Extralight Dura Ace bike, which cost him close to ₹4 lakh, is the most expensive of the lot. It’s a professional road bike, with a full Titanium body, which makes it light-weight and aerodynamically superior.
Sreejith Nair’s LA Big Mo cruiser
There are some special-purpose models such as the LA Big Mo Cruiser, a street bike with an oddly-shaped body and the Gomier cargo bike, a popular bicycle among Australians.
The only tricycle in the collection comes with a carrier basket attached to its back that has more than enough space to hold large shopping bags. Sreejith also owns a few high-end bicycles that can be folded to the size of a 21-inch television, which makes them great to carry around while travelling.
Sreejith himself modifies, repairs and restores the bikes. For example, he himself restored the 1985 model GT Pro Performer. “I bought it from my cousin. It was in a pathetic condition and I had to put in a lot of work to bring it back to life,” he says. Sreejith also gave the Cruiser a complete makeover with new handlebars, stickers and seat, all of which he bought online. While many of the bicycles in the collection were bought from different places in the country, some like the Cruiser and Merlin had to be imported through dealers.
Sreejith, along with his parents, Geetha and Manikandan Nair, and brother, Ranjith, takes care of the . The entire family believe that the bicycle is the need of the hour to save the planet. “Both Geetha and I were active riders during our school and college days like many others of the time. I still remember people bringing truckloads of groceries and household items, bought from Chala, to our house in Poojappura on bicycles. Men transporting dozens of banana bunches on bicycles was once a common sight in the city. Then, gradually, cycles fell out with people,” says Manikandan.
The couple began actively riding again after joining a city-based bicycle club, a couple of years ago. Geetha, a beautician-cum-yoga/aerobics trainer, believes cycling is the perfect fitness exercise for homemakers who spend most of their time indoors. She is glad to see more and more women turning into regular riders.
All four of them often go for rides in the city. They ride different cycles and manage to regularly ride all the models in the collection, raising quite a few eyebrows on the street, in the process.
Only Sreejith, however, rides the unicycles as “they are difficult to balance.” The family believes that letting people see the different varieties of cycles itself is enough to attract new enthusiasts.
Manikandan says: “When we ride some of these peculiar looking bicycles, people get curious and curiosity can trigger them to try out cycling. Recently, I took the Cruiser for a ride to Maruthankuzhy. I had to park it on the roadside for a while. When I came back, there was a huge crowd around it. They hadn’t seen anything like it before.”
Sreejith believes that popularising cycling can work wonders for the environment as well as bringing down pollution, apart from it being a healthy hobby. He adds: “The bicycle is an eco-friendly means of transportation. Vehicle owners and automobile companies need to understand that no good can come off their craze for faster and more powerful vehicles. What the world needs is the pollution-free efficiency of bicycles.” Ride on!
For the record
Up until 2013 Sreejith had a collection of 158 different audio devices that included amplifiers, audio players, speakers and headphones. According to India Book of Records, it was the largest such collection in India at that time.
