Shortly after I completed my master’s and got my first job at the Intercontinental Hotel in Delhi and feeling chuffed at receiving my first salary, my Mum having pitched in by digging into her meagre savings to make her son mobile, I became the proud owner of a Jawa motorcycle. If memory serves me right, in that year that bike carried a price tag of a princely sum of ₹4,200. 1974 was also just about the time when Delhi was able to boast of having a new flyover, the ONLY one in that city which had one end in Defense Colony with the other in Jangpura Extension. In those days when helmets were almost a rarity, how I loved clipping up and down that half kilometer stretch of road with the wind tousling up my hair.
Having to swallow a loss of almost a thousand rupees when I sold the Jawa to take up my planting job with Malayalam Plantations I was over the moon when, on reaching Panniar Estate I learnt that the company provided all executives a company owned and maintained Royal Enfield motorcycle for the likes of me to get around, supervising the estate. Included in the ‘mobility package’ was a rather generous additional petrol allowance for personal use of the bike. A minor downside to this bit of news was being told that the bike would be available to me only after 4 months of me being required to walk the estate, trying to keep pace with the redoubtable Mr. Balia. A fait accompli which simply had to be taken in one’s stride. During those four months of dawn to dusk trekking, before the promised Bullet motorcycle was made available to me, if I remember correctly, I ended up wearing out at least two pairs of Bata Hunter boots.
Old (for lack of a better word) is an expansively polite word for describing the dubious vintage of the two wheels which I, post the 4-month daily plodding, was finally made the proud ‘owner’ of.
Barring the fact that both the bikes were essentially ‘just 2 wheels’, the heavy and ponderous Bullet was altogether a different kettle of fish to the lithe and light Jawa I had thus far been used to. Added to which was the condition of the terrain on which I was expected to be riding that machine. I have very consciously refrained from using the generally accepted word ‘road’ to describe the topography of the trails over which this machine was expected to transport me. Suffice it to say that more often than not, my ‘steed’ would be sliding and skidding along paths which a sure-footed goat would have been wary to venture on to.
While this has been altered in the latter models of the Royal Enfield Bullet, my bike at that time had the gearbox on the same side as the exposed and bulbous exhaust muffler. For some inexplicable reason the fact that the exhaust was just below the gear lever, resulted in my right leg coming in contact with that searing hot pipe almost every single time the bike skidded (at least 5 or 6 times a day) which, whenever that contact was made, resulted in me depositing and leaving behind a generous portion of my skin and flesh on that damn pipe. The resultant scars, even today a good 5 decades later, are on display whenever I am in a pair of shorts. Regardless of all that skin and flesh being generously deposited to barbeque on the muffler, how I loved that set of wheels!
Relocating to the flat terrain of Assam, which is also when I acquired my first 4 wheels, the transport all assistants were expected to use to get around the estate was a prosaic bicycle. A rather dramatic comedown from sliding along steep dirt tracks on a motorcycle and a state of affairs which continued till a couple of years down the road when the tube light likely flickered on in the brain of some decision maker sitting in Calcutta that just ‘maybe’ an assistant could cover more of his 300/400 hectares of tea if, instead of him spending the better part of the day sweating his guts out peddling away, the guy was to be provided with some more efficient mode of transport. A long overdue brainwave, the fallout of which was a motorcycle albeit a much lighter and less powerful machine than the Bullet.
Moving on from Assam, in terms of 2-wheeler mobility, my many years spent in Dubai and Sri Lanka were akin to wasted gap years.
Within a couple of years of us relocating to the Nilgiris, I jumped at the offer when a friend offered to sell me his 2006 model Royal Enfield Bullet. Wild horses could not have held me back. And so, there was I, back in a saddle and back to whizzing around the beautiful hills, with that deep throated heartbeat, the well-recognized and easily identifiable hallmark of the Enfield Bullet, pulsating in my ears.
In addition to the fact that now when I skid, I don’t end up leaving behind a generous portion of my calf on the exhaust pipe, the one other additional refinement that my present set of wheels has over the old lady I had during my years in the High Ranges, is that this one has an electrical starter, albeit one which has the habit of throwing up its hands ever so often. Whenever the starter decides to go into some sort of hibernation mode, it leaves me with no option other than to revert back to kicking ‘madam two wheels’ into life. An operation fraught with an element of risk since every now and then the old lady has this rather nasty habit of kicking back like a stubborn mule. A whack which smarts!
Driven by passion and while all my friends tell me that ‘at your age’ I should not be doing this; I am very comfortable hoiking my golf bag on to my back and heading for my weekly two rounds of golf at the stunningly beautiful Ooty Golf course, handling the load on my back without any qualms. The pain in the arse is having at times, to kickstart the bike into life. Over the years with my old lady aging, what with the electrical starter going into a tailspin and my leg muscles becoming unequal to the task of the strong kick required to resurrect her from the dead, there have been times when I have had to seek external help from a younger and stronger pair of legs to kickstart the machine to life. This having gone so far as on one occasion having to induct a cop who was on duty on some road, to do the honors. A bloody irritating disadvantage which I have no option other than to take it in my stride.A couple of weeks ago, in an evening in the club, I was as usual gassing around, this time around with a young friend of mine when the conversation veered towards bikes, with him massaging my ego telling me how he admires the way I hug the curves on my Bullet. With one thing leading to another I ended up bitching about how pissed off I get on days when I am unable to kick the bike into life, when he shared this lulu which left me trying to hold back my tears of laughter.
Sarosh shared with me the story of an elderly Parsi gentleman in Bombay who apparently is as besotted by his old model Bullet as is yours truly. The gentleman, having ended up with an age related back problem and frustrated by his inability to gun the engine, had come up with what has to be the most innovative and optimum solution. He employed a driver! A young bloke whose only job was to kickstart the bike, take it off the stand, hand it over to his boss and hop on behind the old codger. At the end of a ride, the youngster was required to hop off and pull the machine back on to its stand. The rest of his ‘working’ time was spent by the ‘driver’ sitting on the pillion behind the geezer with the old man weaving his way through the Bombay traffic, looking for opportunities where he could roll the throttle around to its limit and feel the surge of adrenaline.
When one’s in love, it has to be all the way!!