The first vehicle I owned was a toy car when I was six or seven. Jokes apart, my first vehicle was a second-hand, silver Jawa.
To me, as a student, it seemed like a quintessential design for a bike. I bought it in the mid-80s, when I was studying painting in Sir JJ School of Art Mumbai.
I paid very little for it and bought it with some difficulty. It would break down quite often; oddly enough, those are the best memories. There was, almost always, a problem with the spark plug. Each time, I had to stop on the road and fix it.
Slowly, as I began to understand the basic mechanism of the bike’s workings, I started getting into the machine and I enjoyed the process very much. I fixed it only when it was a simple problem; otherwise I had to take it to a mechanic.
One day, I remember I was going to a party in the evening, when the bike stopped. I was trying to repair it and I was having trouble with it, when a drunk man came to me and declared that he would join me wherever I went. I couldn’t possibly leave the bike and go away. But fortunately, the bike started and I just zoomed away.
It was fun going into town on the bike with a friend, at night. Those days, there was much less traffic in Mumbai, and the town used to be deserted. Bombay was, as it still is to a large extent, beautiful at night. But it was really nothing like it is now.
We used to hang out at the Jehangir Art Gallery, which was the only place where artists could meet and work. There used to be a ‘milk bar’ which would sell coffee and egg preparations. We couldn’t afford to eat in the gallery’s café, called ‘Samovar’, which writers and artists in those days used to patronise.
It was around that time that we had an exhibition, during the monsoon season, where I showed something to the public for the first time. It was a prestigious show for young artists in those days. I’m not sure if it still takes place. It was also around the time I was exploring various options, trying to look for various ways of making objects. Though I was studying painting, I was more interested in doing sculptures. In some ways, that was really a beginning of sorts for me; I had just started moving into three-dimensional objects.
I had the bike for nearly five years. And then I moved to Ahmedabad, so I sold the bike and replaced it with a second-hand bicycle.
As told to Harshini Vakkalanka
