World Bicycle Day: How Hyderabad celebrates its beloved two wheels through art and nostalgia

Hyderabad: At sunrise on World Bicycle Day on June 3, the streets of Hyderabad are unusually poetic. Near Tank Bund, the fog hasn’t quite lifted, and a milkman pedals slowly past a schoolboy with a heavy backpack on the back of his cycle. Just beyond them, a group of women in cotton sarees are giggling as they test out their new second-hand bicycles in the alley behind Koti’s fruit market.

There’s something timeless about this image—something profoundly Indian. The bicycle is not just a means of transport. It’s memory. It’s rhythm. It’s resilience on two wheels.

World Bicycle Day may be a UN observance, but in India, and particularly in cities like Hyderabad, the humble bicycle has been shaping lives, landscapes, and imaginations for generations.

Cinema’s love affair with two wheels

From Bollywood to Telugu cinema, the bicycle has long been more than a backdrop—it’s often the heartbeat of the frame.

Take the 1992 classic Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar. Yes, it’s a sports drama, but the cycle race at the climax was about more than victory. It was about social class, personal transformation and familial pride—played out not in a stadium, but on a winding hill with schoolboys and their battered bikes.

In Swades, Shah Rukh Khan doesn’t arrive in a Lamborghini—he borrows a cycle to ride through the village, rediscovering his homeland one pedal at a time. And in the Telugu gem Pelli Choopulu, Vijay Deverakonda’s character navigates middle-class dreams with a delivery job and a cycle in tow, reflecting the very real entrepreneurial spirit in India’s tier-two cities.

Hyderabad-based film curator M Vasu Rao, speaking to NewsMeter, explained, “Cycles in our films represent something deeply emotional. When a character gets on a bicycle, something is about to change—either within them or around them.”

Paint, pedals and the personal

In art, too, the bicycle is a deeply evocative subject.

Hyderabad-based illustrator Ankita Kulkarni, whose work often blends childhood nostalgia with modern surrealism, said, “A cycle can tell a story without a single word. It’s my shorthand for freedom, especially when I paint women on bicycles.”

Her recent piece ‘Monsoon Messenger’ features a schoolgirl riding through puddles with banana leaves tucked into her backpack. The inspiration? “My cousin in Karimnagar who used to cycle ten kilometres to school through the paddy fields,” Ankita said with a smile.

Internationally, bicycles have been used in installations, sculptures, and graffiti to symbolise cycles of life, protest, or movement. In India, the St+Art India festival turned old bicycle parts into sculptures in Mumbai and Hyderabad to bring attention to sustainable urban living.

Cycle Stories: The everyday epic

Perhaps the richest stories come not from canvases or cameras, but from people on the street.

In 2022, a group of students from the University of Hyderabad started a project called ‘Cycles & Lives,’ documenting oral histories from bicycle users across the city. They spoke to:

• 12-year-old Fareeda, who delivers tiffins on her cycle before school in Moazzam Jahi Market.

• Vinod Kumar, a part-time history teacher in Uppal who refuses to buy a scooter, cycling 14 km daily with a bag of books strapped to the back.

• Lakshmi Aunty, who’s been riding her son’s old Hero cycle to her tailoring job in Tarnaka for the last 22 years.

The cycle as symbol

Across Indian literature, too, the bicycle has often been used as a metaphor. In R.K. Narayan’s The Painter of Signs, the act of riding a cycle becomes a form of meditation. In Tamil short stories, the ‘lady’s cycle’ is a marker of defiance and independence. In poetry, the cycle represents motion in stillness—a constant turning of life.

Even in Indian wedding photos, bicycles are finding their place—couples posing on restored vintage cycles as a symbol of partnership and journey. Not to mention, eco-conscious baraats where the groom arrives pedalling instead of on a horse or in a luxury car.

Why the bicycle endures

It endures because it is accessible. It is democratic. In a country where mobility can often be dictated by class, caste, and gender, the cycle offers a quiet rebellion.

Shazia Farheen, who teaches cycling to women, says, “When a woman learns to cycle here, it’s not just about balance. It’s about self-worth. It’s one of the only moments she owns the road.”

On World Bicycle Day, let’s not just celebrate the health benefits or environmental advantages. Let’s celebrate what the bicycle truly is in our culture—a silent, sturdy symbol of movement, memory, and the many human stories it quietly carries.