Have you seen a white
elephant? No...? Well, if you want to,
just trot down to my place, because I have a couple of them right here in my
garage.
The men of the house look after them, wash them reverently, and occasionally take them out for ceremonial outings. They are expensive to maintain – very expensive. And they eat a lot. But its fun to ride on them. Especially if one happens to live next to the Palm Beach Road - Navi Mumbai's answer to Julio Avenue. Whizzing on Palm Beach Road late in the evening, cool wind hitting your face and blowing your hair back - 'This is life', you feel!
Yes, I am talking about bikes...
bikes that belong to the ‘boyz’ in my house – the spouse and the son. Try as I might, I don't think I'll ever understand what it is about men and motorcycles... that thing that reduces men to slobbering jelly-like beings who think with their adrenal glands when in the presence of a Harley-Davidson (or even lesser specimens).
And they
catch it rather early on in life. My son caught it when he was just 4 years
old. At that time, if someone said, “I am going to take away your Dad’s car” - he
would just give a dismissive shrug, and say, ‘Theek hai’ in the most nonchalant tone.
But if someone dared to say, “I am going to take away your Dad’s bike” - all hell would break loose. One
could almost see strobe lights flashing in his nose, eyes and ears like a robot
suddenly gone bonkers, and he would launch himself upon the culprit with a yell
meant to curdle the blood and pickle the flesh...
But back to the story of our
white ellies. One fine day last year, our son sat Sudarshan and me down, and
informed us in a low, melancholy voice that life was not really worth living –
unless, of course, he had a new bike. That elicited an immediate response from both of us –
only, Sud finished saying “Of course!!” much sooner than I could complete
uttering “What absolute rot! NO way!!”
The ‘Of course’ won, of course. And
the first white elephant came home less than a month later. It was a rather
snazzy Yamaha, and we all got invited for free rides, and enjoyed them to the
hilt. For exactly two months, that is...
Then, passion took a backseat to
convenience. “Tchah, bikes are not really
the thing for Mumbai roads... what with the rains and potholes and all!” declared the teenager, like an enlightened Buddha. And since then, white elly#1 has cooled its
heels (or whatever it is that unused bikes cool) in our garage, except for its
occasional visits to the service station.
But the real shock was last week,
when suddenly I found the elephants were reproducing! One fine day, I found 2 bikes in the
garage instead of one! I rubbed my eyes and tried to recall what I'd drunk
the previous night, but the double vision would not go away. It WAS another
bike. And this time it was the older boy who had gone and done it. Sudarshan had indulged
himself with a 500 CC Enfield – covert operation 'Desert Storm' was well on its way!
A bit about our history with
bikes here...
The very first bike Sud got was a
Jawa. A friend just told him to take it off him, for free... and Sudarshan soon
realised why. It would run rather well, whenever it could start - which was
about once in 23 blue moons... And it had this annoying habit of stopping at
the most inconvenient of places. Imagine, being on the pillion of a bike that
stops right in the middle of the busy Raja Garden crossing – with scores of angry Punj commuters spouting gaalis and doing a war dance around you. And once, we almost caused riot police to be
called in, when the Jawa stopped (and just wouldn't start again) in an Old Delhi by-lane where it was difficult
to find even an inch of road space
that was not occupied by a foot, butt, or wheel...
But still, both of us loved the
inscrutable old bike - its eccentricity kind of matched our own... and
reminiscing about our days of courtship is never quite complete without a few fond
memories of our rides on the Jawa!
That was 27 years ago. After that there has been a
series of them – begged, borrowed and bought. But the Jawa was special. As was the Honda – the first bike we actually
bought, and the one on which I learnt to ride. (That is a story too – but I’ll
save that for another day.)
In recent years, I had thought
the yen Sud had for bikes had waned over time... till the Yamaha and the Desert Storm came home in quick succession. Sighhhh... I must say (even at the cost of sounding sexist) - if we girls want our peace with our shopping expeditions, I guess we've got to allow the boys their dalliances with their Enfield or Harley-Davidson!
So now, here I am... stuck with
the two gargoyles in the garage. And with every passing day, jokes like - “How
do you fit four white elephants in the garage?” “Two on top of the car and two
below...” seem less of a joke and more like a scary future possibility...
