I will start off by saying I love utility biking, but utility biking in India, where my family live, is of another breed. Indian travel conditions are famously inhospitable. Especially in the Indian peninsula, the familiar southward outcrop of land that actually takes up 2.4% of the country’s area, warm and moist conditions conspire to create a 3 month-long monsoon season of nearly continuous heavy rain. Throw in the extreme population density and it’s no wonder that, most of the time, the suburban roads and surfaces in India are a cramped, manic and potholed mess.
And yet, loads of people cycle here. The country’s GDP per capita of $2,191 places it 144th out of 191 nations globally and means that, for the average working class person, a bicycle is the only affordable transport. Just any bicycle would never do to survive the Indian roads, though. For those, you need something deviously simply, but deeply ingenious and practical.
When I went over this year to see family, I’d spotted the familiar silhouette of this Indian utility bike in the hundreds: an upright, Dutch-style design made of straight steel tubing. The top tube was resolutely horizontal, the handlebars swept back gently with curved brake levers - usually made of metal rod, too - following their arc. I watched in fascination as handymen, couriers, egg salesmen and commuters alike plodded along alarmingly in vicious traffic on these machines, pedalling as slowly as their singlespeed gearing allowed and hilariously large loads swayed on their rear racks. Their weather-beaten rusted chains would visible sag and the chainrings make massive deviations from the circular as they spun along. It’s safe to say they were not oval by design.
These bikes made for a fascinating sight, and my mechanical interests were immediately piqued. I absolutely had to find out more about them.
As it happened, it was on the very last day of my trip that I met Pyarelal and his gloriously patinated Atlas bicycle. Pyarelal serviced cooking ranges and extraction fans, he said, riding 15k to and from his home in Airoli, Mumbai as he made his house visits. He was disarmingly modest about his bike usage but, as I probed further and examined the bike itself, it was apparent this was a seriously ingenious and hard-wearing piece of machinery.
Atlas bikes had been making this design since 1951 out of their factory in Haryana in Northern India (they’ve only recently shut shop for good, in 2020). As with a lot of Indian automotive design of that era, it looks like a legacy of older, retired or obsolete European designs. The frame seems conventional enough bar a horizontal brace that extends from head tube to seat tube. While hard to confirm just from observation, it seems like a 1” threaded headset in there and the BB is similar to archaic French designs, with a cottered pin holding the crank in place.
Intriguingly, there were no braze-ons on the frame at all, including for the brake mounts or for cable guides - most likely a cost or time-saving measure for the production line. Instead, anything that might have usually been brazed on was secured via robust alloy P-clips that were bolted onto the frame. This included the post-mount brakes (more on those later) and the obligatory rear rack and kickstand.
The fork was where the design got really interesting; I’ve seen coil-sprung front suspension before, but this was incredible. The forks were first very elaborately curved forward with very long trail. Then, two lengths of straight metal rod were hinged onto the dropouts region, then leading to the ends of two misshapen metal springs that were fitted onto barrels on the stem.
This was especially interesting because there was zero actual front fork travel as the forks themselves were fully rigid, and did not telescope. Instead, it looked like the suspension was reliant on the curved forks flexing with every hit and sending the impact further up to the springs as a final dampener. I’m not sure how well this works in practice but I will say - carbon and glass fibre leaf springs be damned; Lauf, eat your heart out. The Indians got there first. Probably.
In the spirit of taking on other modern bicycle giants, if you consider the suspension near the stem and the spring-loaded suspension under the saddle, is it too much to say this bike got there before Redshift Shockstop/Cane Creek Thudbuster too? I’m sure some might like to claim it.
The other remarkable feature was the brake assembly. It should be apparent that, in perpetually rainy and grimy conditions, components are going to rust. Single speed gearing help reduce drivetrain wear and eliminate rusting cables and cable outers. But what about rusting brake cables? The brakes on this bike were, ostensibly, a centrepull/cantilever system, but the designers had eliminated cables entirely from their design. Instead, a series of slim but robust metal rods lead from the brake levers, up to essentially a thin metal leaf spring ‘straddle wire’ on the brake callipers. I can only assume that this also eliminated the need for a spring within the brake assembly - less small parts, less need for repair and replacement.
My first thought was how robust this machine appeared; there was a complete lack of slim, delicate metal, replaced instead by solid lumps. It exuded a reassuring solidity. The second was that, in the very Indian spirit of jugaad (Hindi: जुगाड़ = literally, ‘hack’), it wasn’t as much maintained as made to work. The drivetrain was gently rusting away and the chain sagged by several mm. The rear rack was held together with a spiderweb of straps - some nylon rope, some recycled scrap clothing, a few robust clothes pegs, almost all adapted for the job. When demonstrating how his brakes worked, Pyarelal pulled the levers surprisingly hard, then bashed the front wheel down on the pavement, then tried again as the simple mechanism finally grumbled into gear.
And work it must. Pyare was refreshingly candid about his usage. “We are working people, bhaisaab (brother),” he said in his crisp Hindi, “We can’t have any gears-wears or anything. It runs, it stops.” It’s an often unusual outlook for a lot of cycle owners in the United Kingdom, where people may cycle and drive, or own multiple bikes for multiple terrains and purposes. But if Pyarelal’s bike broke down, he wouldn’t have the luxury of choice.
When I put images of the bike up on social media, the comments were all similar; look, how petty and silly we are for obsessing over our bikes when others have to get by with so little. I don’t think I would advocate this approach to cycling outside an Indian context - it is, literally, cycling for survival, getting from A to B with severely limited means, however possible. It’s a uniquely brutal and pragmatic existence that I’m sure would appeal equally to someone riding the Trans-Uganda route, or racing the Tour Divide. People like Pyarelal might think this is nothing, but it’s very special - and I applaud it.
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