While driving a car you look at the world through a frame, whereas on a bike you yourself become the frame.
Since the day I’ve become old enough (Indian Driving age :P), I have been a bike person. A Standard Royal Enfield Bullet is the love of my life. The long rides on it have been more thrilling and orgasmic than any love I made out.
As it is said with a Bullet, a trip to a couple of destinations is very common. One to the unexplored mountains and the second to the old trusted Bullet engineer (I would like to designate him as one rather than a mechanic). It is about the second destination I write about today.
Shera( My Bullt, RE 350 Standard) has been majorly lived in 3 places. The planned roads of Chandigarh, the mountains near Dehradun and deserts of Kathiawar region near Jamnagar. With all these cities, I have noticed that these engineers have a lot of common traits, as if they were born in the same big family and then they were sent to different parts of India to serve the realm( Royal Enfield riders are no less than a realm). Their genetics define the following traits: Their undying love for the mean machine, understanding the riders mind and how he/she wants the machine to behave and more of all, greeting us with a lovable greeting( yes, the abuse chant is in a lovable way).
Daana in Chandigarh’s sector 38 motor market, Bhura in InnaMullah Building Dehradun and Salim near the railway phatak Jamnagar have been the engineers who haave cured Shera now and then.
But it will be his family doctor who has cured him since he was born will be the one I will be talking about.
He is lovingly called ‘DAANA’ and has his workplace at sector 38 west Motor market. At a first glance he appears to be a short dark man with greasy clothes with a smile on his face. His relationship with Bullet spares is even longer than my calculated age. With only five subordinates it sometimes is unimaginable how he manages to take care of the large number of Royal Enfields parked around him.
As soon as he kick starts the bike, the experience of twenty years flows down into his ears. The sound of the engine is all he needs to observe to trickle out the fault in it. With a spare shop attached to the workplace, one need not go around looking out for the parts.
Behind the shop I saw a couple of rusted rimless chassis placed. On asking what he plans to do with them, he replies,” Make them”. To my next question, “into?”, he just glances over a newly shimmering bike parked an arm’s distance away and winks at me saying,” this is a 25 year old chassis I’ve worked upon”.
Amazed at his workmanship and skills I asked him that what did he charge for the modification? What I got as a reply made onions look as diamonds.
Such magicians with machines are normally ‘not’ graduates in technology because students studying engineering prefer holding a gamepad in their hands than a spanner.
Tireless body and a smiling content face is what draws me to them even when my Bullet only burps a little, because they are the only other men I would let the love of my life be with.
Scribble Magic 