What bikes do to boys
By Debabratee Dhar
Agniv Malakar, a second-year BTech student, paints a picture for you: shift the gear, start picking up speed. Second to third, third to fourth. Wind in your hair, open road laid out before you. The adrenaline starts to kick into your veins.
“This is the feeling I chase when I go for a ride on my bike,” he tells The Telegraph.
Apurba Banerjee, a bachelor’s student from a south Calcutta college, adds, “I keep my earphones on, play music when I hit the road. I know it’s a little risky but after a busy day, this is a great stress buster.”
Sayandip Dasgupta often borrows his father’s bike in the evenings and on weekends for a quick spin with friends. “When I feel sad, I just go for a ride.”
Srijat Saha Roy, 20, is a student of animation with a part-time job. He got his first bike two years ago, with a down payment and an EMI that is continuing even today. He says, “When I saw my friends riding, I wanted one for myself. Now we can go for rides together.”
Amrit Raj, author of Indian Icon: A Cult Called Royal Enfield, says, “We have all grown up watching our fathers and uncles using motorcycles as the most common mode of transport. It is embedded in the fabric of Indian culture. But since the 1990s and early 2000s, bikes have graduated from being utilitarian to something quite attractive.”
Agniv’s earliest memory of wanting a bike is from when he watched Tom Cruise perform stunts on his motorcycle in Mission: Impossible and Top Gun. For Sayandip, the bikes featured in M.S. Dhoni’s biopic struck a chord.
Courtesy: Shourjashish Samanta
Mohul Sen, 19, thinks back to a motorcycle advertisement he watched on television when he was only six or seven years old. “Bikers would perform really cool stunts and they would have pretty women sitting behind them. The tagline would say: Definitely Male.”
Arnab De, a professional with Genesis Advertising, says, “When we are promoting a bike, especially if it is an ultra-modern, funky-looking model, we target the urban, young crowd. We would have a male protagonist and maybe even bring in a girlfriend. For adolescents, the emphasis would be on the thrill of riding and liberation. We will also highlight the bike’s power, agility and speed.” He then adds, “We want to show the bike as an essential part of an adventurous lifestyle.”
Most highways have a speed limit of 60 kilometres per hour, but according to the boys, early mornings and late nights are a free pass. Says Apurba, “At dawn, I hit the Baruipur
Expressway and speed up till 100-120 kmph.”
“Feel like God”, “Dhak Dhak Go”, “Let the Good Times Roll”, “Unleash Your Inner Rebel” or “Discover Your Wild Side” are some of the other popular taglines featured in bike commercials.
They may appear for only a few seconds on your screen but they leave a lasting impact on young viewers’ minds, shaping their ideas of freedom and masculinity.
Sujat Hussain, 20, refers to his interest in motorbikes in grunts and gestures, something about being a man in today’s world. Mohul refers to it as a “sense of freedom”, a “sense of rebellion”. Sayandip calls it “peace”.
As for the women, there is no reason to suppose they are immune to this “bike madness” as many women bikers’ gangs will bear out.
But for now, their numbers are not as much, which is why for the purposes of this story the spotlight is not on them.
What boys do to bikes
By Moumita Chaudhuri
Rabin Mondal, 19, was still in school when he got his first bike. It was an R1 5, a sports bike. “I purchased it from my neighbour,” he tells The Telegraph. A brand new R1 5 costs ₹2 lakh. But Rabin’s parents paid a little less.
Rabin’s father runs a salon in Kamalgazi, a locality on the fringes of south Calcutta, and his mother is a domestic help. The couple took a personal loan from a local moneylender for the weighty purchase. Says Rabin’s mother, “He had been asking for a bike for quite some time, but his father wasn’t relenting. And then one night he didn’t return home. We were scared; we decided to give in.”
She continues, “An older boy from his school had a bike, and he would let my son ride it. My son was obsessed with the bike. He used to steal money and buy lottery tickets, hoping he would be able to make the purchase himself. He used to leave home in the dead of night to participate in bike riding competitions…”
Courtesy: Shourjashish Samanta
Rabin works in a salon for a living. Bikash Mondal, who is also 19 and lives in Ruby, drives app bikes. He too caught the bike bug while in school when he came across a group of bikers who were into buying and reselling used bikes. This group kept a lookout for old bikes up for sale, scanned second-hand bike retail sites, frequented second-hand bike stores and so on. Two years ago, Bikash bought a brand new Kawasaki. He sold his mother’s only pair of gold earrings to make the down payment; the rest was made up with a bank loan.
Boys don’t just want to possess a bike. Shahbaaz, 21, a motorbike repairman from Baruipur in the suburbs of Calcutta, has bought a used bike and then upgraded its lights, a horn, a fresh coat of paint and stickers. Shahbaaz’s social media pages have multiple DPs of him posing with his bike.
Rabin, on to his second bike now — a third-hand high-end sports bike that cost him ₹9 lakh — says, “I often go for long rides with my girlfriend. We generally take the Diamond Harbour Road. She makes reels for our social media page.”
Rabin’s new bike has a raised pillion seat. Bikash’s Kawasaki looks more like a Royal Enfield. He says, “I changed the look. I threw away the square headlight and angular mirrors.” He also modified the handles. “These new ones look like the antlers of a deer. My social media followers greet every upgrade with likes.”
Saddam Malik, who runs a bike repair shop in Mukundapur, will tell you that these tweaks are “innocent”. “The major thing that they do is change the silencer and replace it with what is called the after-market exhaust. It makes a lot of noise. Then there is the blaster silencer that emanates a series of deafening blasting sounds as the bike picks up speed. These are illegal tweaks,” says Malik.
Roop Bakshi is a model and a professional biker. He would not like to be clubbed with the boys who bike without any care for rules. He elaborates on what Malik has said. “Their first and last intention is to make people notice them. So, they replace the silencers to increase the sound and then zigzag into the crowds and cheekily speed past large vehicles. They also change the air filters. This means the air from the bike is released without any filter and the bike also picks up speed easily. It is a violation of pollution rules and it also spells wasteful fuel consumption.”
But the most dangerous thing that they do, according to Bakshi, is fixing fog lights. “These lights are required only while driving on a dark stretch of the highway or a hilly area. It is illegal to use them within the city, as the person coming from the opposite end will get blinded.” He continues, “They also fix the air horns, which are very loud and leave a sound trail behind.”
Soumya Das, 17, says owning a bike ensures acceptance into the peer group. “It is almost like possessing an iPhone,” he says. Soumya has purchased biking gear, body armour, and sunglasses worth ₹10,000.
A senior officer in Kolkata Police’s traffic department, who does not want to be identified, says, “Last year, four boys died on the Ultadanga flyover when racing. Bike accidents have gone up by 20 per cent in the last three to four years.”
He continues, “Among the victims are two sections of boys. Those with rich parents and those on the opposite end of the spectrum. They perform stunts, shift from one bike to the other, speed and click selfies while attempting all of these things.”
Bakshi says, “The boys want to look aggressive. To them, aggression is power, and power comes only from style.” But it is Shahbaaz who sums up the underlying philosophy. He says, “If I possess a bike, I am the boss of my life.”