Pedals Between Courtyards | Passion Projects | Education | 55109

In the early hush of Chittagong’s breath,

I tighten the straps of my satchel—

Notebooks, a parcel, a page half-torn,

And poetry folded like ruti in a cloth wrap.

The road knows my name.

My cycle greets it with rhythm.

Abbu once rode this lane too,

His voice rising like azaan

As he called out names to deliver newspapers—

The ink still clinging to his palms

When he’d return and tap on the gate:

“I brought stories home.”

Now I ride for purpose and pay,

But more for poetry.

Each delivery whispers

In the wind between my spokes.

I pass courtyards blooming with conversation—

Ammu’s voice in someone else’s mother,

Scolding the crows away from the rice,

The clang of steel plates being scrubbed

Echoing like a song we all know.

An old uncle with a lungi tucked high

Waves me down to carry a letter

To his daughter in Sholoshahar.

He pays with tea

And the weight of missing someone.

I never refuse him.

The city is a patchwork of familiar faces—

A boy with hennaed fingertips selling guava,

A woman who’s learned to survive storms

By knitting sweaters from leftover yarn,

A sister who writes poetry

On ration paper and gives it to me like payment.

I carry their stories on two wheels.

Some days,

I deliver more than parcels.

By mid-afternoon, the heat wraps its arm

Around my back like Dadu once did.

She’d feed me mango slices

And tales from when the trains were slow

But love was fast.

Now my wheels trace her memory

In the alley behind our home,

Where the tamarind tree still leans

Toward the broken brick wall

We never fixed—because it holds

Too many family names carved by hand.

Evening settles like attar on a prayer mat.

Lights blink on like scattered stars.

I return home, legs heavy,

But my heart light with fragments of people—

Their lives tucked beside my verses

And the day’s receipts.

Ammu hands me water.

Abbu reads my mileage like it’s a poem.

My younger sister asks,

“Did you meet any poetry today?”

I smile.

She doesn’t know

That poetry rides with me—

On every crack in the road,

Every brake pressed in caution,

Every kind stranger who hands me change

And says, “Stay safe, beta.”

This city pedals forward

With prayers on its lips

And stories in its baskets.

It teaches you

That love isn’t always loud—

Sometimes it’s in small gestures:

A gate left open,

A meal left warm,

A poem left unsigned

In a stranger’s hands.

And I?

I write them all down

On the back of delivery notes,

Tying poems to my pedals,

Family to my breath,

And community to my wheels.