🚲  Shahswaar of Islamabad: Showcasing My Folding Bike and Falling Into a Manhole

I was one of those lucky kids who owned a full-sized folding bicycle back in the 1980s. PECO (Pakistan Engineering Company) was a major industrial manufacturing enterprise that made bicycles alongside their heavy machinery, and one of their standout consumer models was this unique folding bike.

My father bought one for me in the early ’80s—a beautiful, metallic blue bicycle—and overnight, I became the coolest kid on the block. Riding a bicycle that could fold completely in half was almost unheard of back then, so I proudly rode it everywhere, showing off its shiny blue frame at every opportunity.

My maternal uncles (Mamoos) lived in Islamabad, and we visited them frequently on weekends. In those days, traveling from Peshawar to Islamabad meant a three-hour drive along the historic Grand Trunk (G.T.) Road—long before anyone in Pakistan had ever heard the word Motorway.

One weekend, as usual, we packed our gear and loaded my folding bike into the back of our Volkswagen bus for a trip to Islamabad. It was the very first time we had brought the bicycle along, and I was beyond excited to show it off and cruise down those long, quiet capital avenues. The second we arrived and Abbu began unloading our luggage, I unfolded my bicycle and immediately took off down the empty sector roads.

What I didn’t see was an open manhole on the side of the road, completely obscured by tall, wild grass growing around its rim. Unaware of the danger, I rode straight into it at full speed.

My front wheel dropped instantly, sending me flying face-forward over the handlebars. I was unbelievably lucky not to fall directly down into the manhole shaft. Because the PECO bicycle frame was long enough to bridge the opening, the bike got wedged across the top, launching me safely onto the pavement on the other side.

I lay there on the road in severe pain for a while until my younger sister happened to spot me. She ran straight back to the house to alert my father, who rushed out to rescue me.

Looking back, I was fortunate to survive what could have been a devastating fall—and equally blessed today to hold this memory as a sweet, enduring reminder of my childhood misadventures.

گرتے ہیں میدانِ جنگ میں ہی شہسوار وہ طفل کیا گرے گا جو گھٹنوں کے بل چلے (Only the brave riders fall in the battleground; how can the child fall who only crawls on his knees?)