Let me tell you how I learnt to ride a two-wheeler. Back in 1975, when I was a teenager, my father had an old, blood-red Lambretta scooter. We were in Trivandrum then, and my parents used to go for a walk every evening. I’d been watching Dad ride, and, like any other teenager, thought I’d be able to manage quite well.
One evening, when they were away on their regular walk, and I knew I had a clear half an hour, I took the scooter out and got it started. It went a little way and stopped, and I just couldn’t get it started again. I wheeled it back to the garage and behaved as if I had done nothing at all.
BANGALORE:15/08/2011: A view of antique scooters (driving condition) were displayed by the Bangalore Classic Scooter Club as part of the Independence day celebrations in Bangalore on Monday. Scooter companies like Vespa, Lambretta, Bajaj, Vijay Super, around 50 scooters and manufactured between 1955 and 1994 were displayed. . PHOTO:G R N SOMASHEKAR
The next evening, I grilled Dad about riding the scooter, and he mentioned opening the fuel valve, which I had not done. The next chance I got, I took the scooter out again. I was having a fairly good time on it — there was very little traffic in those days — and I saw a familiar couple walking along the road outside the Napier museum: my parents! I thought it would be a good idea to stop and tell them, rather than face the storm when they got home, so I did that. As it turned out, that saved my skin. They weren’t particularly angry, and I got away with it.The scooter was so old its speedometer was marked in miles per hour, not kilometres. So Dad told me that if I were particularly careful and did well at school and so on — all those conditions that parents like to impose on teenagers — I could have a hundred supervised miles, with him riding pillion, during the summer vacation.
I own a Maruti Ignis and a Hero Karizma and plan to get a Yamaha FZ25 next month. I still like to do 350-400 km in a day once in a while.
As told to Nikhil Varma
