By Ganesh Saili
‘Can you ride a motorcycle?’ she gently teased, as only she could.
I was in love with her, so I lied through my teeth.
‘Of course, I can!’ I heard myself say.
Truth be told, I couldn’t even ride a bicycle, but one look at her, who wouldn’t have lied! We were sitting, she and I, in a little shack called the canteen. At eighteen, I was a devoted slave to her dimples. Given a chance, I would have loved to drown in them.
‘I’ll show you,’ I bragged, grabbing the bike by the handlebars, taking off like a man possessed. Once astride, it swung left, I went right; the pair of us wobbled around like a drunk. I thanked my stars that there was no traffic, it being early morning, and I managed to weave my way back to the college without mishap. I tried to appear nonchalant, but my pallid face gave me away.
Pic courtesy: Author’s Collection.
‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘You’re looking shattered!’ she said, walking away, leaving me to gather bits and pieces of my heart. That put on hold my dreams of drowning in her dimples.
Years later, I did buy a hand-me-down motorcycle from Nandi Dayalchand, a schoolteacher relocating elsewhere. I wish I had known beforehand that, apart from many other ailments, the Jawa had attention deficit disorder. To fix that meant that every Sunday, the bike and I would be found hanging out at a workshop near the Himalaya Arms Shop at Dehradun’s Clock Tower. ‘Both front shockers have gone bust!’ announced the mechanic, barely able to hide his glee. Everything made a noise – except the horn; the chain rattled; the spark plug spluttered, and one had to light a match to see the puddle of light from the headlight.
I am not a bike fiend – I was not meant to be one. The times were lean and our looks leaner. Soon after, I was fighting the battle of the bulge.
Pic courtesy: Rahul Kohli.
Any guidebook on the hills will tell you that our first motor-car, a Model T-Ford, arrived here in the third week of June, 1920. It was driven by Col EW Bell, a son-in-law of the Swentenhams, who built Cloud End. That picture of it parked outside Kulri’s Fitch & Co is the stuff of legends.
Our early roads were littered with horseshoes and nails fallen from bullock carts. Who could have dreamt of riding on two wheels? A Colonel Frederick Kearsey did. He did exactly that, astride a Triumph 550 cc Model H, to have tea with the exiled Ranas of Nepal in Fairlawn Palace.
Our list of celebrity bikers includes author Stephen Alter. His affair with a 1936 vintage Norton 16H is the stuff of gossip in our hills. They growl, the bike and him, along the Upper Chakkar. There was the late Bill Sa’ab, better known as the author Bill Aitken, who was in love with his beloved Jawa. He chuckled as he remembered how his improvised stepney came loose, and he saw it bounce into the Indus River, floating across the border with no visa. His delightful account of it is in Riding the Ranges – Travels on my Motorcycle.
How can I forget PJ Tenzing, a young civil servant of the Kerala cadre? He needed no permits to reach our home. He’d given up his job, bought himself an Enfield Thunderbird, and with all his meagre possessions strapped on the carrier, headed back to his home in Sikkim. He made voluminous notes of his journey, a 25,000 km ride that took over nine months. You can read about it in the book, Don’t Ask Any Old Bloke for Directions: A Biker’s Whimsical Journey Across India.
‘Why did you throw up a job that attracts so many?’ I asked.
‘Enough ‘sir-ing’ idiots,’ he replied. ‘I quit. That was it.’ I guess he’d had enough of ‘many a ghoul’ who enter into a macabre dance with pot-bellied Netas.’
A few weeks later, he passed away in Gangtok. He was only forty-six.
In an imperfect world, do not look for perfection, and know that a bike on the road is worth several parked under the awning.
(Ganesh Saili, born and raised in the hills, belongs to those select few whose words are illustrated by their own pictures. Author of two dozen books, some translated into twenty languages, his work has found renown worldwide.)
