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Interested in blogging for timesofindia.com? We will be happy to have you on board as a blogger, if you have the knack for writing. Just drop in a mail at toiblogs@timesinternet.in with a brief bio and we will get in touch with you. Steel Toe Caps For Boots
Dr Gautam Sinha is founder-director of IIM Kashipur, an avid biker at 69 and an unabashed motor-head.
In the September of 1977, I became the proud co-owner of a Jawa 250cc lovingly named Lili Darlin, bought for a princely sum of Rs 3,500. Till November 1979, I had a blast with Lili Darlin. Sadly, the opportunity came to become the owner of a second-hand Bullet, one which I succumbed to. I sold Lili Darlin for the same amount I had bought her (so much for my first love) and bought a 1972-model reconditioned Bullet for Rs 7,000 – an impulsive decision at best, ill-timed and barely affordable, especially when my salary was a thousand rupees gross. In cerulean blue acrylic paint, with wide handle bars BHR 3052 was definitely a he- a stallion! I had taken away the RE insignia and put in a sticker of Apollo (tyres snipped off) in black and orange and the unique identity stuck. Hell, I was a vain youth just 26 years old, with a secure job in one of India’s largest companies, in big league with a salary of thousand bucks in 1979, at least in my eyes and who cared! I felt more alive, larger than myself, in a manner of speaking. The existentialist angst was waning! Walt Whitman’s lines from ‘Song of the Open Road’ probably summed up my feelings:
“Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing… Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me. I inhale great draughts of space, The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness.”
It took me time to get accustomed to the rather awkward ergonomics of the Bullet, with brake pedal on the left and gear shift on the right, but the extra-wide handle bars were a boon. Expertise, hard-earned on the Jawa, was lost and I was again a neophyte. Another valuable life lesson – every change brings its challenges, be ready to learn afresh! Bullets of early 1970s came with iron hubs, single-leading shoe-front brake, which led to poor braking. The most painful part was that the rear wheel also had the speedometer drive. In case of a puncture, taking out the rear wheel entailed a great amount of pain.
I learnt from my biking guru Manjit Singh, with great dedication, the art and science of motorcycle maintenance. Apollo, like all Bullets, had a habit of clattering tappets if driven hard above 80kph. That started no end of experimentations with rocker panels. The idea of a ‘silent’ engine with no clatter of the tappets was a great challenge and the holy grail of all Bullet owners. This started a series of experiments with different materials and increasing lubricant oil pump pressure, some successful and some not so! Older Bullets before 1985 had a problem of poor headlights because of 6 Volt electrical generator and the battery used to fall flat if the headlights were used too much at low speeds. By 1980, we had figured out a solution by replacing the selenium diode stack with power diodes in an assembled bridge rectifier. Millimetre by millimetres, under Manjit’s tutelage, the mysteries of the Bullet began to unveil themselves. My other guru KV Arun Kumar chipped in with his driving lessons. My one guru was a romantic, involved with the form and dominated by feeling; and the other was a classicist proceeding by reason, interested in making the unknown known and understood. What an education! The right and left hemispheres of my brain must have developed new synapses and synergies during this learning process. We improved the power of the engine by shaving off half a millimetre from the cylinder head, improved the fuel consumption by passing a fine wire through the main jet of the carburettor. Over the coming months, I discovered Apollo’s unique personality, and also that my brusque driving style with two-stroke Darling Lili would just not work with four-stroke Apollo! That applied to the maintenance too. Lili was forgiving, Apollo was not!
I embarked on my first solo bike trip of 350 km from Bokaro Steel City to Patna. Having absorbed the part about packing for a motorcycling trip from Pirsig’s book, I had invested in an excellent pair of motorcycling gloves, a tinted visor for my helmet and my Bata Industrial safety boots, with steel toe caps, made excellent riding boots. I had a windcheater, in a terrible colour scheme though, and also had my prescription glasses made in photo-chromatic glass in a large frame. I had packed the night before, filled Apollo’s petrol tank, checked the lubricant and battery electrolyte, also packed the requisite tool kit with chain coupling link, extra clutch and accelerator cables, and probably forgot to buy headlight bulbs. The solo was successful, Apollo cruising at 80kmph, soaking the bumps with ease and that gave me a modicum of confidence.
I got married in November 1981 to Shampa. A week before our marriage, I landed up in Patna but had to put Apollo on the train. Most of the family thought it was too rash for the groom to be driving on the lawless roads of Bihar, hence no risky ventures allowed. A week after my marriage, I took Shampa on her first ride on Apollo. I was uncomfortable, my new wife was sitting side-saddle as pillion, and she was uncomfortable and probably afraid. This probably was her first ride on a motorcycle and hence she slid as far back as she could and held on to the back rest. In this precarious situation, I was trying to negotiate the unruly Patna traffic, terrible even in 1981. As luck would have it, one imbecile of a cyclist, teetering landed right in front of my bike. I stamped hard on the brake, stopped millimetres away from him, Shampa slid down the long seat and thumped against my back. Half-scared she was hurt, half-relieved that I had not hit the cyclist, I let loose a stream of choice expletives, a carry-over from the steel plant shop floor. A backward glance through the rear view mirror, showed my new bride’s mortified face, pink with the double embarrassment – being hurled violently against my back and the torrent of choice expletives from her new groom. That sealed my fate, my image of a ‘good boy’ was shattered for life in my wife’s eyes. Many years later she told me, she could not reconcile how an ‘educated person’ can have such a crude vocabulary!
By and by, she learnt the art of riding pillion, astride and not side-saddle and, more importantly for me, snuggled up and held on to me! On some of Bokaro Steel City’s majestic, brightly lit and often deserted roads, taking late night rides on Apollo, I remember both of us humming a Kishore Kumar & Lata Mangeshkar duet from the film Rocky, “Kya yahi pyaar hai? O Dil tere bin kahin lagta nahin, waqt guzarta nahin…”.
Ah callow youth! Our daughter Tulip came in 1984, and soon started enjoying the bike rides, often riding perched on the tank. Apollo was with me till March 1989, till severe back pain forced me to part with him. It was a sad goodbye.
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Views expressed above are the author's own.
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